Highway 62: An Official "Scenic Byway"

After Medford, Highway 62 takes you through a wasteland of RV vendors, chain fast food restaurants, places to rent cranes and boats, and many opportunities to buy rocks, boulders and plywood. It was really very horrible. The landscape is flat and dry, with the mountains in the background. It could be lovely, but I guess they have to put the electrical substations somewhere. Our overall impression of Medford and environs was of a fairly tatty, semi-industrial town with the obligatory giant lumber mill and Veteran’s Hospital. A bit like a macho Coventry with mountains.

After Shady Cove, everything changed for the better. The landscape isn’t as breathtaking as our route through northern California, but it has pleasing mountains in the background and a lot of trees. As Hubby said, “Aren’t there a lot of trees in the world….?” These ones are a variety of pines and spruces: Juniper, Ponderosa, and Lodgepole, to name just three. They are a bit scrubby looking, but then you can’t have majestic 350 feet high redwoods everywhere, it would just get boring, wouldn’t it? The land further up Highway 62 seems to be used for ranching: We saw horses and cows, and there were even some vineyards. At times the road ran high above the Rogue River, which was obviously popular with kayakers for its white water rapids.

After Prospect, we found ourselves back among the trees, as the road winds through the Rogue National Forest. At Union Creek, we took a short diversion to see the Rogue River Gorge – much tutting and sighing from the kids - and it was spectacular. Congress has determined that this should be preserved as an official “Wild Scenic Place”. I’m not sure whether the ashphalt path and the chain fences help meet that desire, but they did enable us to get close to the edge of the Gorge and have some wonderful views of the rapids and waterfalls. The Gorge was created by a combination of the collapse of lava tubes (lava from the Mount Mazama eruption about 7,000 years ago that is), and the force of the Rogue River water. Over a distance of some 500 feet, the water cascades in impressive leaps and eddies through a chasm probably no more than 25 feet across.

Once again, the kids had got out of the van with their best “This is boring” sighs, and by the end they had really enjoyed the stop. And, of course, Hubby was able to get his camera out again and take several hundred photos of the water, many of which are very good. (Got to give him his due…)