08-28-2023 Escaping the Smoke to a Favorite Place

When we woke early this morning, the sky was thick with smoke. It has been like this for several days because of the Smith River Complex fires, with most of the burning acreage south of the Oregon state line in northwestern California. Of the more than 80,000 acres burning, only 12,000 or so are in Oregon. Although the fire boundaries are many miles from us, the smoke is blown directly into the Rogue Valley by the dominant west and southwest winds that come our way from the Pacific. It was time for an escape.

Smoky skies on our route leaving Grants Pass

I use several different weather and fire maps to track where the thick smoke plumes originate and where they might go. We had planned to camp at our favorite little spot, Medicine Lake in northern California, toward the end of August. The window for camping there is short, with a big tribal medicine celebration in late July that closes the largest of the four campgrounds to the general public, and cold and snow beginning sometime in early September. There are only a few sites at the Hogue Campground that we like best that are available for reservations and none of them are close to the lake. As we often do, we decided we would take our chances and hope for a good spot available on a Monday afternoon, as well as hoping for a break from the smoke.

FireAirNow.gov website is good for tracking fire and smoke

When I looked at the app, it seemed that the boundary of the smoke plume was just north and west of our destination. Hoping for the best, we completed a few morning chores after breakfast and finished the last bit of loading provisions for the week into the MoHo. There was some extra watering needed to hopefully get the property through the next few days while we were gone. There were mole holes for Mo to deal with in the grass. Mo needed to top off the salt in our water system. I needed to do a fresh deer spray to keep the critters from completely decimating everything in the yard. Those little stinkers even eat our photinia shrubs, guaranteed to be deer-proof.

Even with all those little details, we managed to get out of the gate at 9:50, after agreeing to let ourselves relax a bit from our original plan to leave at 9. Our route south is easy and familiar. Traveling south on I-5, just a few miles to the Gold Hill exit, we turned east toward Klamath Falls. We could probably drive the Highway 140 High Lakes Pass over the Cascades in our sleep after so many years of driving back and forth between our little cottage in Grants Pass and Mo's house in Rocky Point on the eastern slope of the Cascades. It is a beautiful drive most of the time, but on this trip, even at the maximum elevation of the pass at over 5,000 feet, the skies were thick with smoke.

The view toward Mt Lassen on the left side of the photo from the road to Medicine Lake

Continuing east toward Klamath Falls and then south toward Tulelake on the California border, the smoke showed no signs of lessening. Then, magically, exactly where the FireAirNow website showed the smoke plume boundary, we were out of the smoke as we turned back west on the forest road near Tionesta that leads up the mountain to Medicine Lake. Glass Mountain is north of the caldera where the lake is located and the northern half of the obsidian flow that is the reason it is called Glass Mountain was in smoke and the southern half where we would be camping was crystal clear. It was an amazing thing to see, and to suddenly be in clear air and blue skies was such a relief after breathing thick smoke for so many days.

View of Medicine Lake from Site 45 in the Hogue Campground

Nice little area for relaxing even though the picnic table is a bit far away

We settled into site 45, enjoying the sunshine and the view of the lake. We often take site 42, a bit more level and closer to the lake than our current site, but this time 42 was filled in with a family camping in tents. Even though 45 isn't level and the site for the MoHo is rather tight, we managed to get perfectly level and have room for the slide and the car on the side facing the road with our door facing the lake, just the way we like it.

Mo is the official excellent builder of fires

Mo built a fire while I heated up the green chile enchiladas I had prepared at home. After dinner, we sat by the fire until the almost full moon rose in the east over the lake. It was completely dark by 8:30, an indication that we are enough east of our location in the time zone in Grants Pass that the sun sets a bit earlier here than at home. I woke up at 4AM and stood outside in the chilly air to look at stars I hadn't seen at home for days because of the smoke. Even though we came to this lake mainly to kayak, I was looking forward so much to clear skies and night stars again.

A bit fuzzy from the phone, but you get the idea

One of the best parts of camping at Medicine Lake this time of year is the incredible privacy. It is very, very quiet, and the campsites are a considerable distance apart, with trees between sites that limit the view of adjacent campsites. Even if the campground had been completely full, there wouldn't be very many people within view of our motorhome as we look out over the lake.

We are both happy to once again be in our happy place at Medicine Lake.