Out the door and down the road, another day on the water, Odessa Creek Launch

Current Location: Rocky Point Oregon 59F with a predicted high of 83 and sunny

When we returned from our gorgeous paddle the other day, I thought, “Let’s keep the kayaks on the truck and then we can go out again without reloading!”  It isn’t that much trouble loading up our lightweight boats, but it is still nice to put on the hats, grab the sunscreen and simply jump into the truck on a sunny morning for another day on the water.

Mo suggested that we drive down the road a piece to a launch site that we haven’t been to for some time.  Odessa Creek Campground is about 6 miles east on Highway 140.  It is a quiet little camp with no fees and a small launch site to the wide creek that meanders out to Klamath Lake proper. 

It is a pretty place, with lots of cover and shade, but it as usual, for this time of year, the mosquitoes are horrendous.  There was someone camping in a big tent and I didn’t envy them in the least.  We made quick work of the launch knowing that once we were out on the water, we would escape the nasty little critters.

We were on the water by ten, a bit later than originally planned because we waited for the temperature to rise a bit.  The weather was perfect, and the lake was calm and glassy for most of our 7 mile paddle.

We love paddling meandering streams, but being on the lake near the shoreline has meandering ins and outs as well that provide interest.  Paddling around the hills west of Bell Bay, we found the little cabin that was one of our first paddle destinations when we got our first kayaks back in 2005. 

This time, with the glassy water and good weather, we decided to strike out across the bay toward another peninsula, marking the entrance into Shoalwater Bay.  We camped on the east side of this bay back in 2011. 

Being on the lake, even as close to the shoreline as we were traveling, was surprising.  The perspectives change and shift so much when traveling at lake level.  Klamath Lake seems huge!  It is a magnificent lake, in spite of its quirks.  A shallow lake formed in volcanic sediments, the lake is naturally high in phosphorus, and thus home to lots of algae during the summer months.  The algae is actually harvested and sold as a food supplement.

Paddling through some of the green stuff yesterday, I thought how great it would be if we could eventually figure out a way to create fuel from algae.  Then again, the empty solitude of Klamath Lake on a sunny warm early summer day is quite a treasure.  So many places we have traveled, and many waters we have kayaked, don’t offer that great empty silent solitude.

The only noises we heard were the birds and from 20 miles away across the lake we could sometimes hear the trains that follow along Highway 97 north from Klamath Falls.

The most fun to watch were the grebes, both Western Grebes and possibly Clark Grebe, and either a pair or rednecked grebes or eared grebes.  They dove too fast for me to get close enough to them to be sure.  The best part was watching the grebes do their amazing water dance, again too far away to photograph, and too sudden to catch them in the act.  It is really something to see, however, and worth just sitting around in the water waiting for the pair to do its thing.  Of course, I was delighted to find several of my white pelican friends soaring over the water.  Such amazing birds.

I did steal this photo from the internet with kudos to whomever managed to catch these birds doing their mating dance, running along the surface of the water.  Before they start the run, the pair will paddle beside each other with their heads going up and down, extending their necks and retracting them, and then suddenly they take off in perfect unison. As we approached the shoreline on the east side of Ball Bay, I was surprised to see eagles in the trees.  There were two adults and a very large youngster with the brown and white colors typical of juvenile bald eagles. 

By afternoon, as we meandered back to our launch site at Odessa, the sun was high and hot and we were glad we were ready to get off the water.  We even had enough time to get back home, unload the kayaks, and fill up the truck for a load to the dump.  Our rural dump is now only only open one day a week, and we were surprised that there wasn’t a line of waiting folks.  With the price raised to $13. for a small load, I am glad we don’t have to go very often.

Evening was a treat with wine and snacks at Wes and Gayle’s place next door.  It is always fun when they come back from Arizona to spend a few months here in Rocky Point.  We have some fun plans in the works for the summer with them, including an evening at the Britt in Ashland for Lyle Lovett and His Large Band.  Looking forward to sharing our favorite little camping spot with them as well, with a trip to Medicine Lake in the works for late July.

The flowers are blooming, the iris and peonies are opening at last, the lupines are reaching their full height.  Ahh…June.  Probably the best flower time here at Rocky Point. 

 

Out the Back Door Kayaking Upper Klamath National Wildlife Refuge

Current location: Rocky Point, Oregon Sunny and 50F at 6am, predicted high today 79F

Ah yes, finally.  We managed to walk away from yard and house chores for a day and loaded up the kayaks.  I was appalled when I realized that the last time we had the boats in the water was back in Florida in March.  Sheesh.  As I wrote in the title, some of the very best kayaking in the country is right out our back door.  The Rocky Point boat launch is just a mile from our house, but yesterday we decided to travel a few miles north on Westside Road to launch at Malone Springs. 

Yes, some of you know my last name is Malone, but no, the springs were named long before I arrived in the Klamath Basin in 2002.

We were on the water by 9:40 AM, and a big surprise was the lack of mosquitoes at Malone Springs.  The Forest Service boat launch site has two free campsites, but the mosquitoes can often be daunting during the early summer.  In fact, most of the east side of the Cascade range in Oregon is plagued with a heavy mosquito population, including some of the more lovely lakeside campgrounds.  Maybe not as bad as Minnesota or Alaska, but definitely something that requires planning.  Don’t forget the mosquito spray for shoreline activities!  However, once out on the water, mosquitoes and bugs are almost never a problem.

Skies were perfect and the temperature was cool enough that we wouldn’t get overheated out on the water.  Winds were light, coming from the north, so we had a bit of a breeze and a very little bit of current to paddle against on our way north to Crystal Spring.

One of the great pleasures of working soil survey in the Klamath Basin was the opportunity to map the soils in the Upper Klamath National Wildlife Refuge.  With more than 14,000 acres of organic soils supporting wetland plants, the marsh is directly adjacent to the forested lands of the Cascades.  The complex vegetation patterns provided endless riddles of soil and vegetation patterns to decipher. 

Looking north as we paddle along the creek, we are treated to a view of the Crater Lake Caldera, still covered in snow. 

Unlike the spring runs in Florida, the waterway we travel here is fed by hundreds of springs that come from the pumice soils all along the eastern slope of the Cascades.  The water is cold, and there are a few large springs that are named, but many others feed the creek that flows through the marsh, as well as the thousands of acres of natural wetlands that are on the northern side of Klamath Lake.

The refuge canoe trail is famous for fly fishing.  These 3 guys were the only folks we saw on this day on the refuge.

Different kinds of soils support different kinds of vegetation, and this is true of subaqueous organic soils as well. One of my major accomplishments mapping these wetlands was figuring out the complex relationships between different types of organic soil and vegetation patterns.

Remember that old saying, “out in the toolies”?  These are the real tules, bigstem bulrush, that dominate the marsh.

They provide amazing cover for the many birds that we heard but did not see as we paddled along,  When the tules get tall, they hide the sandhill cranes, great egrets, and blue herons that we heard calling throughout our paddle.

Other major native plants that occur in the marsh are several species of sedge (carex). 

The sedges seem to like the organic soils that are less weathered, more fibrous, and the willows occur in areas where the fibers are the least weathered, soils that are peaty rather than mucky.  You have no idea how many holes I bored in this marsh to finally figure this out.  As they say “What difference does it make?”  Maybe none to the casual kayaker, but for the refuge managers it is helpful to know how to manage the refuge, and soil information has a big influence on refuge management decisions.

Other plants have colonized in some parts of the refuge, such as cattails and Canary Reedgrass, beautiful to look at, but not natural to the environment and detrimental to the existing plant communities.

Beaver dams are plentiful along the route.

No houses along the route except for this vacation property where our fishermen were staying.

Just a bit more than 4 miles of paddling brings us to beautiful Crystal Springs. 

Traveling along Westside Road by car will lead to a roadside rest area with a trail down to the spring, but launching from this spot would be a bit of a pain.

North of Crystal Spring is a well known bed and breakfast called Crystalwood Lodge, visible from the channel north of the spring that I am reasonably certain was dredged for spring access.

We turn around for the paddle down the creek, with current in our favor and no southern wind coming toward us from the lake.  The winds often come up about 2 in the afternoon and on this day we beat them.

There aren’t many places along the route that are conducive to landing, but back at the area where we saw the teepee, there is a rocky point that provides a place to get out of the boats and give both Abby and Mo and me a bit of a break before we continue back along the meandering route to return to Malone Springs.

The snow is still deep on Pelican Butte.  Our home is at the base of that long slope below the mountain at the left side of the photo. The reflections on the return route are always mesmerizing to me, and I can’t tell you how many photos I have from this spot.

I paddle slowly, sometimes simply drifting along with the current, taking time to photograph the beautiful wocus, sacred and important plant to the local tribes for centuries.We slide into Malone Spring once again, still quiet with no other campers or paddlers around on this Wednesday afternoon.  It has been a perfect paddle. 

With the marsh vegetation providing great cover, the birds that we actually saw were a redtail hawk,  redwing  and yellow head blackbirds, and as Carol Herr would say, lots of ‘little brown birds”.  Later in the day I did have one great blue heron fly gracefully across the creek right in front of me, but the camera was in the dry bag by that time so no photo. I made a sound recording of a bird call I didn’t recognize at all, and hopefully I can get Judy or Carol to tell me what the bird might be.  I know the sounds of the herons and the cranes, but this one was completely new to me.  No snakes, turtles, or alligators are in these waters, and I found myself missing them a bit.

I mapped our route with the Motion GPX app on my phone, just over 4 miles each way.

Here is another map that is related only peripherally to the kayak trip.

The black line on this map refers to the known wolf activity zone in the Cascades for OR7 or Journey, as he was named by Oregon schoolchildren.  If you haven’t read about him yet, here is the story.  There are many newspaper articles out there for this event, but I chose to share this one because it was written by the son of a good friend.

I call Journey “my wolf’, not because I have actually seen him, but because one night back in 2011, when he first began his journey to southern Oregon and California, while he was traveling through the Wood River Valley, Mo and I heard his howls during our evening time in the hot tub.  Liz Parrish, owner of the Crystalwood Lodge actually saw him near her place, no doubt interested in her pack of sled dogs.  Crystalwood is probably the most dog friendly lodge I know of!

“My” wolf is a daddy. 

For the first time in nearly a century pups have been born in the Oregon Cascades.  I believe we need to live in a world that includes predators for balance.  Some of my local Rocky Point friends are all up in arms over this wolf near us.  They are cattlemen, and ranchers, concerned for their livestock.  Journey and his mate are hidden high in the mountains, and in all his travels he has never approached any domestic animal.  I support the right of the wolf to live in Oregon, in this part of Oregon.  There are great ranchers who have figured out how to live with wolves, and I pray that here in the Wood River Valley they don’t ever lose an animal to a wolf.  I pray for Journey’s safety and I celebrate his new family.

 

 

Life and the Rest of May

Current Location Rocky Point Oregon Sunny and 45 F with a predicted high of 75.  Perfect

If the month of April at Rocky Point is mostly about winter cleanup, the month of May is definitely about gardening.  Real gardening, not just all the cleanup, but the kind of gardening that rewards one with watching beloved perennials grow lush, shopping for the hundreds of annual plants required to keep some color in the yard over the summer, and planting all of them.

The house at Rocky Point is on land that isn’t really that big, even less ground than the Grants Pass winter cottage, but there is a lot more to do here it seems.  Lots of nooks and crannies, lots of different planting beds, and of course, lots of pine needles to keep digging out of the rocks.

A big job this time of year is getting those pine needles off the roof.  Mo does the climbing and I hold the ladder and manage the electric cord for the blower.  I laughed this time as she carefully crawled back down from the steep side of the eaves and I said, “How much longer do you suppose?”  We love it here, so much.  But it IS a lot of work at times, and the question lingers…how long will Mo be able to climb that roof to blow off the needles. 

In the mean time, after returning from the coast before Mother’s Day, we spent some extended time over at the cottage, doing some of the cleanup jobs that are on the list over there.  The nice thing about the cottage is that there is really no deadline.  Other than burning the debris in the springtime burning window, we have as many years as we need to get that .89 acre cleaned up and ready for us to live there.  The defining moment may never come, then again it could come all too soon, maybe when Mo no longer wants to plow snow or blow needles off the roof at Rocky Point.

As luck would have it, we decided to be in Grants Pass for Mother’s Day, with a plan to do the classic Mother’s Day activity of Sunday Brunch at a beautiful restaurant.  Daughter Melody and the kids drove over on Sunday morning to see the cottage and share the morning with me, Mo, and Deborah at the Taprock Grill next to the Rogue  River.

I had so much fun watching all the moms and grandmas and seeing all the flowers and presents and everyone posing for family photos at the various lovely sights in the park adjacent to the restaurant.  I felt like I was right in the middle of a middle America tradition that somehow remains the same in spite of a changing world.

During our time in Grants Pass, Mo split the rest of the oak from the tree we took down last year, moved a flower bed that was right in the middle of the planned new drive entry to the MoHo shed, mowed the acre and did a ton of weed eating.  We cleaned up the outside corner and built a mound, bought a couple of crepe myrtle trees for color, planted the mound, and Mo burned a ton of debris.

We parked the MoHo along an old cement patio and it felt just like our own private campground.  Even though Deb was gone and we could have stayed in the cottage, we chose to enjoy our own space in the MoHo, sitting on the patio watching the sun set over the hill to the west is a special pleasure of the land in Grants Pass.  At home, our sunrises and sunsets are blocked by the high Cascades and the immense forest.

Our choice to be in Grants Pass that weekend was especially auspicious, since daughter Deanna and husband Keith once again were traveling south along I-5 and I got to see them twice in less than 30 days!  On the Saturday before Mother’s Day, they parked at a nearby rest area for the night and met Deb and I for breakfast at Elmer’s not far off the freeway. 

Sad thing about the Grants Pass cottage, even though it has more land than Rocky Point, there is no place to park the big rig there, and the roads leading to the cottage are too narrow with weight restrictions so the kids can only park downtown at WalMart to spend some visiting time with us. 

With their LA arrival time scheduled for the next day, they had a few hours to do some sightseeing with us, and Deb and I drove them through the gorgeous Applegate Valley not too far south of the cottage.  Deanna and Keith are saving money while trucking with a plan to buy property somewhere eventually, and of course I am hoping that will be close to me here in Oregon. 

Lucky for me, the springtime beauty of the Applegate was fabulous, with blue skies dotted with puffy whites and new fresh green bursting out all over.  I love the Applegate area, with farms and wineries, and for Deanna and Keith, who love being a lot farther away from town than I do, it was perfect.  We spent quite a bit of time looking at some interesting properties that really caught their eye. 

Nothing was decided, but I am glad that there will be sweet visual memories of the lovely Applegate area in their minds over the next few years as they make decisions about where they might want to settle down.  No snow, kids! Although they also love Alaska, so I suppose snow isn’t yet much of a deterrent to them.

Deanna became a grandmother for the fifth time in May, and once again I am a great grandmother.  Theron was born in Wenatchee this month, brother to Orion and Tearany.  I am glad that Deanna has the opportunity to be close to these grandchildren in spite of family complexities.

I have that crazy obsessive feeling that often happens this time of year: too much to do and not enough time: too many choices: too many things I want to be doing!  Obviously, writing has slipped to the back of the list and I am simply keeping track of what is going on with short notes on my Google calendar.  I do love that particular application.

On another note, an application that I don’t love quite so much is HGTV’s House and Landscape program.  I actually paid for the stupid thing and spent quite a bit of time trying to at least get a rudimentary replica of the cottage and grounds set up so we could get some ideas about what me might like to eventually do there.

Not so much.  The learning curve is huge, and I am not completely stupid.  The software is cumbersome and after a day or two of fiddling with it, I decided that a piece of graph paper and a pencil was the better option.  Maybe some snowy winter day I will get back to it.

In the midst of gardening and landscaping work at two homes, I am trying to have time to quilt.  Our quilt group gives away “huggie” quilts to anyone in the community who is hospitalized or has lost a loved one.  They have given away 141 quilts in the last six years since they started doing it.  As a fairly new member, I have yet to complete a huggie quilt, and am now working on one.  I am a new enough quilter that it is extremely hard for me to give away a quilt to someone I don’t know. But I decided it is time to step up to the plate and the quilt is in the works.

Tiny living room in the cottage all painted an pretty thanks to Deborah’s hard work

Late in the month, Deborah was sent to Dallas for a work related training, and her company allowed her to fly home to Grand Junction instead of Grants Pass.  When she moved home from Colorado last year, she had to leave most of her belongings in a storage facility and this was her chance to get everything back in one place.  With a bit of complexity due to missed flights, she finally got everything on the truck and headed west via I-70 and Highway 50, the Loneliest Road in America, and pulled up to the Grants Pass cottage late on Sunday evening.

Mo and I were waiting with supper and hugs.  The next day, with help from neighbors Glenn and Karen, we all unloaded the truck into Deb’s new storage place, just a couple of miles from home.  The cottage is tiny, but at least she can go down to her storage and get things like her blender and spices, and other small things that she has missed so much in the last year while adjusting to her new life.

John Jr, Deanna, Sue, and Deborah in 1966 in Oroville California

For me, getting Deb’s stuff out of storage had another benefit.  Deb was the caretaker of several boxes of very old family photos.  When I think of my “bucket list”, getting all the family photos scanned, organized, named, and catalogued is huge on the list.  I took back the boxes and started the scanning project.  I know it is morbid, but there are many people my age leaving the planet, and the one thing I want to have completed before I do so is the photos to the kids project. 

My mother who passed away in 1952, me at 3, and my grandmother who passed away in 1993.

I knit during the early news programs, quilt till it gets warm enough to get outside, garden as long as my back holds up, and then try to work on photos the rest of the time.  I barely scan blogs any more, and like last month, I rarely comment.  Thank goodness for Facebook, a bit quicker and I can at least let folks know I am still around and reading.

Friend Jeanne sent an email yesterday, complaining that there was no blog and wanting to know what in the world I was doing.  Friend Mary Ann from Albuquerque sent an email asking if I had done something with the Mother’s Day blog she thought was up there and couldn’t find.  Nope, no blog.  Just a quick facebook post with photos!  So, for my two most loyal friends and readers….here is the blog!