07-12-2021 Camping in a Caldera at East Lake Part 1

When we returned from our little day trip kayak, I realized that half the month was nearly over.  If we were to keep our personal commitment to taking the MoHo out at least once every month, I needed to find a someplace to camp.  With so many people on the road, it is necessary to have a reservation at just about any campground within driving distance.  I am sure there are places to camp along a creek somewhere, or in the mountains and in the forest without a reservation.  For us, however, a lake with good kayaking is top on our list for summer camping.

I started searching all the National Forest and State Park campgrounds that might be a good destination.  Many of the lakes on the west side of the Cascades are reservoirs.  Thanks to the drought, many of those lakes are extremely low. 

Howard Prairie, where we have camped in the past, is at 5 percent capacity, with Hyatt Lake 3 percent.  Even Fish Lake where we camped and kayaked last summer is only 21 percent full.  I thought about trying to go to Medicine Lake, without a reservation, but at this time of the year we couldn’t be sure of getting a decent site that wouldn’t be too far from the water to make kayaking reasonably effortless.  I then remembered sweet camping times we have enjoyed at East Lake in the Newberry Crater National Monument east of LaPine. Our previous visits were wonderful, with no problem snagging a first come first served site right on the lake.  This time was different.  Checking the Deschutes National Forest reservation page, I discovered that every single campsite at East Lake and the other campgrounds in the area were reserved all the way through August.  Sites in September and October that didn’t have a big R for reserved had a big XX indicating that they could not be reserved until a date two weeks prior to the desired reservation date.

The red circle in the photo above is our site 24.

I gave up and thought maybe we could try to get there in late September.  But as I was looking around, suddenly I saw three big A’s, meaning a site was available.  It was only one site, number 24, and was open for July 12, 13, and 14.  Two days away.  Could we make arrangements to leave that quickly?  Why not.  It was either that or giving up the idea of camping in July on a lake. 

Just now, as I am writing this blog post, I checked the reservation site once again, and discovered that there are more cancellations and a few sites are actually available through July and August.  Interesting.  Maybe folks are afraid of the smoke and the fires and are cancelling their reservations.  The forester told me that our site 24 was a cancellation so we were lucky.

We arrived at our reserved site at East Lake Campground around 2 in the afternoon.  We were delighted to discover a spacious campground with well spaced sites and a nice view even from our site in the third row back from the lakefront.

After settling in we took a short hike with Mattie to check out the beach trail toward the east side of the lake.

The afternoon stretched into a lovely evening.  Temperatures were in the low 80s which felt wonderful after our triple digit days back home in Grants Pass.  We searched unsuccessfully for posted rules and drove back to the Newberry Crater visitor center to find a ranger.  She informed us that there was a complete ban on campfires and that we could use our generator between the hours of 8am and 10pm.  Good to know.  We did miss having our evening campfires, but with the fire danger being so extreme it was a small price to pay for safety.

The next morning dawned clear and beautiful with a temperature of 44 degrees F.  The lake was still as glass.  Our first launch from the campground beach was easy.  We kayaked to the east, toward the East Lake Resort. 

I wanted to check out the hot springs along the shoreline, and was saddened to see that with the low water, the springs were almost completely dried up.  In spite of rules to the contrary, people had been digging around the spring to attempt to reach the hot water.  The last time we camped at East Lake I loved kayaking to the spring for a nice soak.

We followed the eastern shoreline, past the East Lake Resort, and the Cinder Campground toward the cliffs on the northern side of the lake.  We saw a couple of ospreys on the trees along the cliffs, and an eagle soared out over the lake as we watched.  With only the phone on board for photos, I snapped a few shots to prove we saw them, but none of them were good enough to post here.

Continuing toward the western shore, I disembarked for a short break.  By the time I got back in the kayak, the winds were picking up and in moments the lake turned rough and choppy.  The half hour pull back toward the campground was a good workout.

Once back to our camp, we cooked a good breakfast and relaxed a bit with coffee and the lake view.  The skies were fairly clear with smoke from the Oregon fires blowing away from us toward the east.  It was a perfect day to explore the road to the highest point in the Caldera at Paulina Peak.

The road up the mountain is paved for the first quarter mile or so and then turns to gravel with some serious washboards on the uphill side of the road.  Traffic wasn’t terribly bad and even though the road is marked as a one lane road, there was plenty of room to pull over and allow cars to pass.  Most folks were careful about waiting at wide spots for cars going in opposite direction.

When we got to the top, the parking area was almost full.  There was a ranger explaining to folks about a fire near LaPine that had started just 10 minutes prior to our arrival. He said it was obvious that they were “on it”, because the smoke was white indicating steam from water rather than black indicating burning material. As we observed the fire throughout the rest of our visit, I did observe some black smoke on the southeast side of the fire.

The skies were clear enough that we could see the Three Sisters toward the northwest.  The views toward the two lakes that are the jewels of the Newberry Crater were spectacular. 

The smoke toward the east was a bit thicker, but we could still see the distinctive shape of Fort Rock in the distance.  Fort Rock is that tiny dark circle which can be seen in the picture below just to the right of the sign and below the distant hills.

After short hikes to the viewpoints at the summit we returned to an empty parking lot.  There weren’t many cars coming up the road as we descended and for that we were grateful.

Our plans for the next day included a hike in the Big Obsidian Flow, visible from Paulina Peak.  The swirling flow of the cooled lava is fascinating to look on from above.  Home to camp tired and happy, we settled in for the afternoon to enjoy the breezes, take a nap, play some cards and have a yummy hamburger supper.

Tomorrow we have two hikes planned and of course an early morning kayak.

06-12-2019 Spontaneous Camping in the Cascades

Current Location:  Sunset House in Grants Pass with clear, sunny skies and 80 degrees F

One of the many reasons we chose to live in Grants Pass is how close it is to the Cascade lakes and mountains.  So many times as we travel back and forth over the High Lakes Pass on Highway 140 I think about the smell of the firs, the sound of a crackling campfire, and wish that we could take time to spend a few days camping instead of simply driving through. 

When we lived in Rocky Point, our home was in the middle of the forest, a quarter mile from Klamath Lake, and we enjoyed all that mountain air.  That air came with the mixed blessing of hordes of mosquitoes, fire danger all around us in late summer, tiny frogs by the dozens who loved to invade our hot tub, and deep winter snows.  Somehow, visiting the mountains is much more thrilling than actually living there, at least at this stage of life.

It was with great delight that we looked at each other, at the calendar, and said, “Let’s Go Camping”.  All we needed was a couple of days and a close location to escape in the MoHo.  Last year around this time we camped at Howard Prairie, a reservoir a bit more distant than the location we chose for this trip.  I checked the Bureau of Reclamation website for reservoir levels, and discovered that while both Howard Prairie and Hyatt Lake were full on May 31, by the middle of June the water levels were down to 51 percent.  Really?  We had a lot of water this year, lots of mountain snows.  Lake Shasta farther south is full to the brim for the first time in years, so neither of us could figure out the reason for emptying the reservoirs so early in the season. 

Hidden away in that data was a surprise.  Tiny Fish Lake, just west of the bigger and much more popular Lake of the Woods, was 97 percent full, and the Doe Point forest service campground seemed like a good place to check out this little lake. 

Mo and I have a memory of Fish Lake from 2003, when we climbed to the top of the nearby Mt McLoughlin, at nearly 10,000 feet, with an expansive view of both Lake of the Woods, and Fish Lake.  Lake of the Woods was bright blue, and Fish Lake was bright green. Mo and I had only known each other a few months, but this great and somewhat challenging hike set the tone for our friendship for the next 16 years.

It seems that the smaller lake is subject to non toxic but rather ugly algae blooms.  We hoped that this early in the season it would still be nice and clear. 

We arrived at the campground at the perfect time, just after 1PM on a Wednesday, when most people had checked out and check in time was officially after 2PM.  There were several sites open, and several sites that had signs saying they were available for one night only, and several reserved and occupied sites.  We drove around the loops a couple of times, checked out the nearby Fish Lake Campground, and decided on a nice quiet level spot toward the upper end of the Doe Point Campground.  Shade was important since there are no hookups at either of these campgrounds and we wanted to stay reasonably cool.

After settling in, I found the camp host, a very short and very talkative and quite nice guy who was very helpful.  He had lots to say about the reservation system, when and where we could park, and the park rules.  We were able to snag the spot for two nights, with no reservations coming up that would interfere with our plans or require us to move. 

Later, as we walked around the campground we discovered a few primo sites that are right on the lake, with a short dirt trail down to the water where we could keep the kayaks.  But that will be for next time, when I might opt for the reservation fee to be sure to get one of those sites. 

On that lovely, warm afternoon, it felt just perfect to be up in the firs, with plenty of space and no one else nearby.  That would change the next afternoon when a family moved in to the site below us, but on that first evening all was quiet.  Even after the people moved in later, with several campsites occupied for their extended family, the kids were all playing down at the lake and the elders gathered at a more distant site, which made us quite happy.

That first afternoon we wandered a bit, explored the campgrounds, did some hiking along the lake trail, and then we pulled out the Weber Q for some excellent chicken.  Why does everything always taste better in the mountains?!  Mo built a campfire with our well seasoned oak and madrone from a few years of tree trimming at Sunset House, and we settled in with a glass of wine and Mattie and our books to keep us entertained until bedtime.

The next morning was chilly, cool enough that Mo needed a jacket to take the dog out, and we waited until after 9 to take the kayaks down to the boat launch site.  That green water wasn’t terrible, and the launch site wasn’t difficult.  When we first got on the lake it was pretty windy, but once out past Doe Point the wind settled down and we had a great paddle to the far end of the lake where the dam is located. 

Fish Lake has a ten mph speed limit for boats, so it is great for kayaking.  Mattie is used to kayaking, and as usual after about 90 minutes she got a bit restless, but two hours was plenty of time to cruise the lake, check out the lakeside remote cabins, and enjoy the bird life.  We didn’t see the eagles and ospreys that we often see at other lakes, but there were lots of American white pelicans, egrets, ducks, and geese.  The fishermen were also bringing in limits of trout, so that little bit of an algae bloom must not have been too much of a problem.

Mt McLoughlin south facing side from Fish Lake

We enjoyed a nice lunch, and then decided it was time to explore a bit more.  As I said, we travel Highway 140 often, and Mo says repeatedly, “I wonder where that road goes?”.  We piled into the Tracker with the dog and headed back west on the highway to find those dirt roads we had always wanted to explore. 

Forest Road 2815 led us down to Little Butte Creek and a well used campsite along the water that looked very inviting except for the trash lying around.  I grabbed a bag and cleaned up the trash, and Mo and I decided that camping there would be a bit iffy, with its proximity to the highway and the possibility that it might be used fairly often by somewhat unsavory types. Not a smart place to boondock for a couple of older women.

We ambled up the road for a bit of distance before deciding that the trees and the mountains weren’t opening up for much of a view to make things interesting.  Driving back to the highway, we found another dirt road that begged exploring and found ourselves on the Heppsie Mountain Road.  I had never heard of Heppsie Mountain, and we decided to go up, and up and up some more to see what it might be like.  This road was a typical forest service haul road, with lots of branches going off in all directions.  We didn’t have the phone with us and even if we did I hadn’t downloaded Google Maps to use offline so had no map.  Right.  No map.  I really wished for a forest service map about then, but alas it was an unplanned foray into the mountains.

We turned around at what I was to later discover was actually Heppsie Mountain, an unremarkable summit that has no real view unless one travels farther west to the more open southern slopes that overlook the Cascade-Siskiyou Wilderness, an area that we explored a little bit last year when we were at Howard Prairie.

It might be interesting to keep in mind that these are areas that are all within a few miles of where we lived at Rocky Point and never ventured to explore.  Something about living in the mountains makes it a bit unnecessary to wander off like this, although we did it quite a bit on the east side of the summit, but not on the west side. 

Home again in the late afternoon for quickie naps, another great picnic supper, a campfire, a glass of wine, and another wonderful dark night with gorgeous, brilliant stars overhead.

The next morning we decided to leave the MoHo in her spot since we didn’t have to check out until 2 and make the short drive down the east side of the Cascade summit to Rocky Point and our old kayak haunt.  The only hard part was deciding which way to go, up Recreation Creek, over to Crystal Creek, launch at Malone Spring? It is all so familiar, and yet never the same. 

This time we decided to launch at Rocky Point, and since the water was higher on Klamath Lake and Pelican Bay than we have ever seen at this time of year, we headed south toward Harriman Creek and Harriman Spring.  Harriman Creek is usually crystal clear, but with the high water it wasn’t quite as perfect as we have seen it.  Also, there is a lot more development at Harriman Spring Resort, and instead of the crystal clear cold water with the rare Mare’s Eggs on the bottom, we saw only bright green algae.  That was a bit of a sad moment for me, since the springs along the west side of Klamath Lake at the base of the mountains are a treasure. 

The high water gave us the rare opportunity to paddle through the Pelican Bay Cut, right across what are sometimes open fields.  This time they were inundated with enough water that we were never more shallow than a foot or so and we wove our way through the wocus and carex toward the main channel that leads from Rocky Point out to Klamath Lake proper.

Mt McLoughlin east facing side from Pelican Bay

It was a gorgeous morning, a beautiful paddle, and it felt wonderful to be back in our old home turf or should I say home water.  After loading up the kayaks, we drove the short distance back to Harriman Springs Resort and opted for a beer sitting on the beautiful outdoor deck overlooking Harriman Spring where we had so recently paddled.

Mattie wasn’t old enough for a beer, but she did enjoy sitting on the patio and acting like a grownup.

It was a perfect 3 day, 2 night getaway, filled with the heady fragrance of firs and campfires, fresh air and blue skies. Fish Lake is so close to us, and it doesn’t seem nearly as crowded and busy as Lake of the Woods or Howard Prairie.  I will have to check the reservoir levels, but I am sure we will return again for a spur of the moment quickie campout that is just over an hour from home.

June 4 Escape to Howard Prairie Lake

Just a reminder, words that are in bold print are links that might interest you.  If you click on the photos, you will be redirected to the smugmug gallery where that photo resides.

Escaping is easy, it just requires a moment and a bit of planning and the commitment to put it on the calendar.  Somehow if it’s on the calendar, we manage to do it.  The original plan was for a trip to the desert, to the east side of Oregon, basking in the high dry gorgeousness of the Steens Mountains. I can’t believe it has been so many years since we were there.  It seemed like a lovely thing to do in early June.

Company gone, chores caught up, we put a week of escape days into the calendar.  I mapped the route, looked at Page Campground near French Glen, checked the weather, read the blog about our last trip to the Steens over Labor Day one year.  Then something happened.  Seven hours of driving, no water to play on, gorgeous high desert that is known for gnats in June at the campground, hiking the main entertainment.  Off grid.  For no reason I can explain, I said to Mo, “Why don’t we go to Howard Prairie instead?  We can kayak and have a campfire and enjoy the forest again.”  That is how a long trip to the high desert turned into a short trip into the western slope of the nearby Cascades.

On the map, you can see Rocky Point on the upper right corner, where we used to live, on the left, our home in Grants Pass.  It somewhat explains why we never managed to get to Howard Prairie again, even though Mo and her family used to have family camping and boating get togethers there many years ago, before I knew them. Living in Rocky Point, we were so close to so many outdoor options, lakes, rivers, the refuges, that we forgot about Howard Prairie.

Now that we live in town, on the west side, we have to be a bit more creative in finding good places to kayak, and that most often leads us back to the mountains east of Grants Pass.

Time surely does have a way of disappearing.  We had good memories of a camping trip to Grizzly Campground at Howard Prairie, but when was that?  Not in the blog?  Oh no!  It was before I started blogging. No journal of the trip?  Oh my!  I finally found the photos, from the summer of 2006, the first year I moved  from Klamath Falls Oregon to Sonora California for my work.  I drove the truck back to Oregon and Mo met me at Howard Prairie with our baby MoHo.  I wish I had written about the trip then, because we spent a lot of the time trying to remember which site we were in, and where we had kayaked. 

What we did remember, however, was that we went to the Britt Music Festival in Ashland, and then drove back up to the mountain lake to spend the rest of the weekend.  That first night we were all alone in the campground, and as we drove in the pitch darkness was a bit disconcerting.  The campground isn't terribly small, 19 sites, and is located right next to the main road.  It was one of the few times in our RVing experience where we were definitely a bit spooked.

That year we had a lovely day on the lake, with water flowers, pelicans, gorgeous views of the mountains, but this time when we got out in our boats, nothing looked familiar.  Howard Prairie Lake is actually a reservoir, and is currently at less than 60 percent of capacity due to the low snow pack from the previous winter.  The shoreline is so far down that the lake is significantly smaller. 

The only factor that wasn’t particularly nice about that low water was the mucky bottom along the shoreline.  Our site was adjacent to the water, and we carried the boats down, hunting for a place to launch.  Mo chose the rocky lower bottom of the closed boat launch, and I chose the mucky bottom.  Still, once we were on the water, everything felt wonderful.

Our morning kayak on the lovely lake was filled with birds, especially the Canada geese with literally hundreds of babies.  The American white pelicans were around, not more than half a dozen at a time, but they entertained us perfectly with their F15 type flying maneuvers low over the water.  I filmed one of them feeding, and he basically ignored me as he dumped over and over into the water in search of goodies.

We saw eagles and ospreys, too high to photograph well from the rocking kayak, and what I later discovered was a spotted sandpiper.  We heard kingfishers, and killdeer.  It is what we love best about our Oregon waterways, all the amazing birdlife.

Once again we had the entire campground almost entirely to ourselves.  The first night a lone camper drifted in and the next morning we met him after his morning yoga on the beach.  He and a friend had just graduated from Berkeley and they were celebrating by driving around the Pacific Northwest.  He rushed over when we saw us approaching the landing area, offering to help us if needed. I guess maybe he was worried because we looked too old to get out of the kayaks alone?  Ha!  It might be funny to watch, but we can still manage it.

The second night we were joined late in the evening by a lone camper in a white truck who quietly set up his hammock and disappeared early the next morning.  On Wednesday night, during a sunny pleasant week in June, we had the entire campground completely to ourselves.  Totally dark and totally silent and totally alone.  For some reason, it wasn’t the least bit spooky this time. 

We woke in the mornings with the eastern sunshine pouring in through the forest and the lake mists, to chilly temperatures.  Waiting an hour or so for the sun to warm up the air a bit, we launched the kayaks for time on the water before the winds came up.  Still, the paddles back home were more challenging because even by 10 or 11 on the lake, the breezes made for choppy water.

We would return from our boating forays before noon and cook a nice breakfast, which served as a great lunch as well.  Two meals a day is perfect when camping it seems. Although one afternoon we did supplement our home cooking with some ice cream from the resort grocery store.

In the afternoons we explored the other campgrounds around Howard Prairie, checked out the resort, with its big campground with hookups, a store, and a marina.  Even the fancy campgrounds were not even close to full, with lots of space.

Another afternoon we drove south to Hyatt Lake, a smaller reservoir nearby, with water that was even lower than that at Howard Prairie.  Hyatt is a lovely little lake, and unlike the Jackson County campgrounds that are around Howard Prairie, the Hyatt campgrounds are administered by the BLM, and are reservation only sites.  On each campsite is a number to call to get a reservation, which you can do on the same day.  Although cell service is basically unavailable, so we decided that if we ever wanted to camp at Hyatt, we would have to really plan ahead.

Sometimes we just say “no” even with 4 wheel drive

I didn’t realize that the infamous Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument boundary actually included the eastern and southern shoreline of both of these lakes.  We started up the rough dirt road, crossing the Pacific Crest Trail, toward the Yew Springs Road, but without maps, the forests looked all the same and we had no idea how far the road went through the same kind of landscape.  Later I did some research and discovered an entirely new world of amazing places to hike and explore right here in our own back yard Cascades Monument.  The hike to Hobart Bluff is definitely on our list of things to do.

The monument is only infamous if you are among my friends who have tracked some of the issues surrounding National Monuments in our country at this time.  This is one slated for reduction, and is the subject of much controversy in the area, some pro, some against, but everyone has a strong opinion.  Much to say here, but I’ll save that for private conversations.

Another lovely feature at Howard Prairie is the beautiful trail that encircles the entire lake, with several sections that are accessible from different points.  We walked part of the trail between our Grizzly Campground and the main Howard Prairie Resort, and another part of the trail that surrounded the upper part of what was once lake but now is only meadow.  The nice thing about the low water was that at this time of year, the exposed banks were covered with thick green vegetation and tons of wildflowers, including huge drifts of yellow monkeyflower.  It was breathtaking.

Wandering through the woods, I was tickled inside to find so many little forbs and flowers familiar from my soil mapping days in Northern Idaho.  Similar species, and even some that are the same, and many that are indicators of moist soils from which they spring. Recognizing some, remembering their names, and seeing others that I had no clue about reminded me that it has been awhile since identifying all those little forbs and flowers was part of my job.

Mo made a great campfire every single night, with well seasoned wood from trees we had taken down on the Grants Pass property a few years ago.  We sat outside by the fire for our supper, without a single pesty mosquito or fly or any kind of bug to bother us.  Still can’t quite figure that one out, but there are very few bugs around the upper end of Howard Prairie, even down by the water.  When we were out in the boats, on the larger portion of the lake, we did encounter a few bugs, but nothing like what we have experienced in the Klamath Basin.

Calypso bulbosa var. occidentalis, the Western Fairy Slipper

During our entire respite, we had no cell service to speak of, except a few notifications that would pop up now and then.  I couldn’t actually see them, so unless I was trying to use the maps, I turned off the pesky phone with it’s irritating notification noises.  No internet of course, no email, nothing.  I love that time for completely shutting off the electronic world, and while it can be a bit of a withdrawal, it has wonderful rewards.  I found myself a bit reluctant to move back into the connected world which seems so full of “stuff”.  It is easy to simply hide away in your own little bubble in the mountains and pay no attention whatsoever to the dramas ensuing in the outside world.

Anemone Piperi, Piper’s Windflower

Delphineum menziesii Larkspur

We ran the generator each morning to keep the batteries charged up, paid attention to our water use and did all the dry camping things that one does for saving water, knowing that we only had a few days back to long hot showers at home  It’s easy to do for a short time, but of course a longer stay would require a bit more care.  Our rig is small, without the huge holding tanks that the big guys have, so boondocking for us is limited to about 5 days reasonably.  We could do more, but so far haven’t really needed to.

We returned to Grants Pass by way of a circular route back east to Lake of the Woods.  I wanted to see if that campground was as empty as the camps around Howard Prairie and Hyatt Lake.  Sunset Campground, where we have spent July 4th and have never been able to get a reservation to camp, no matter when I try, was half empty.  However all the sites were reserved for the weekend.  In the past, people usually reserve sites for two full weeks before the 4th in order to have them for that day.  Crazy stuff. 

We enjoyed our short camping trip thoroughly, driving a bit reluctantly back to civilization and regular life. It was great to get back to our sweet comfy home, but it is all the sweeter when we know that magical escapes like this one are so nearby.