The Hart Mountain National Mosquito (I mean Antelope) Refuge

So, we had a few days of blissful freedom between the spring quarter and summer school. BN had been so focused on Analysis, Algebra, and Topology that he hadn’t really decided where we would go for our mini-vacation until Saturday, a few hours before we left. Hence, we packed up in a hurry (1.5 hours, a new record!). Hence I forgot the camera. So, the first trip we’ve been on since I started this blog but no pictures to post. Sorry about that.

Our destination was Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge, in Southeastern Oregon. BN was excited because there were hotsprings, and the terrain was different from others we’ve visited – more desert-like and sagebrushy. Off we went!

Passing through the tiny town of Oakridge, we noticed a really-and-truly old-school A&W drive-up restaurant. We were starving (I was starving, I’m always hungry…) so we stopped. I’d never really eaten at a drive-up before (we actually ordered to go, but they did bring the food out to us… no roller skates, though) or even at A&W. Actually, it was good. The fries were exceptional. I looked at the take-out bag and noticed that it said, “All American Food.” I thought it was ironic that All American Food consists of Hamburgers and French fries. Yay for the melting pot.

We left in the late afternoon, so the first night we stopped part way at La Pine campground. We figured it must have been near a lake because the mosquitoes were pretty fierce. We hurredly boiled some water and ate our freeze-dried evening snack in the safety of our tent. Little did we know how our perception of the ferocity level of mosquitoes was about to be completely changed… (menacing soundtrack… buh-buh-BUH…)

Day 2

The HMNAR is truly in the middle of nowhere. And it’s beautiful. I was so impressed with the colors – rolling hills with a smooth coating of sagebrush, a lovely shade of you guessed it – sage green! Lots of wildflowers, and a clear blue sky (how we’ve learned to appreciate those, living in the misty Willamette valley for a few years now). We arrived at midday, after a bumpy ride over a gravel road (but not as bad as we’d feared – go Honda, go!) and a visit to the ranger station, we picked out a nice campsite near the creek, which had a bit of shade. We spent a lazy afternoon, mostly inside the tent because there were quite a few mosquitoes considering it was the middle of the day.

Late in the day we ventured out to the hot springs. The official one, with the stone enclosure, was occupied so we went to the “natural” one whose only development was a sign that said, “soap and shampoo prohibited.” For good reason – it was as hot as a bathtub, in fact hotter – more like a hot tub where you feel the need to get out and get your body temperature back to normal every once in a while. Wow! It was an amazing experience to be sitting out in a totally natural water setting, and feel as hot as in a spa. But I could tell the difference – the heat felt more wild, more intense. I could sense the power of the earth in that heat, not just some electric or gas power.

We cooked Indian food: chicken curry in coconut milk and orange juice with raisins, served with rice and supplemented with one of those Indian dishes in the foil pouch. We are rockin’ camping gourmets! However, the only reason we were able to stay outside and cook in the fading light was our trusty bug-net-hats. The skeeters were out in force – clouds of them around our heads, quarter-sized patches of them clustered on our backs, trying to suck our blood right through the 2 or 3 layers of clothing we wore. Needless to say, we dined in the tent, after chasing down and killing the half dozen mosquitoes that managed to ride in with us. After dark we re-emerged, washed the dishes, and enjoyed some wine and chocolate by the campfire. Relief at last.

Day 3

So, we’d been planning to backpack up to the plateau-peaks of Hart Mountain. We expected there to be fewer, if any, mosquitoes since there was also no water – we planned on melting some snow from the various patches up there for our water source. After a snack-breakfast (in the tent again, the mosquitoes were up bright and early) we packed up our loads and set out to hike. It was another beautiful day, but not too hot which was good because once we left our base camp there was no shade anywhere. The two-lane tire-track trail was fairly steep, but easy to walk on. There were at least two dozen varieties of wildflowers – ranging in color from white, pale pink, and yellow to deep purple and clear blue. There were large daisy-style flowers and wild irises, down to tiny blossoms with 1/16th-inch petals. I saw huge yellow-and-black butterflies, medium size black-with-color-accents, and tiny blue ones that traveled in flocks. A smooth patchwork of grayish, pale, and bright greens was spread over the hilly landscape. Layer after layer of sculpted blue hills and mountains were visible on the horizon. We saw our first solitary antelope as we reached the top, and set up camp in the shelter of an outcropping of rock. The view was tremendous, we felt like we were on top of the world.

We took our handy “camp sink” collapsible bucket, and scraped it full of snow. Then the tedious task of melting the snow began. It’s inefficient to just heat snow over a backpacking stove, so what we did is heat the water we had left and poured it over snow in our small bowls, and floated some snow in the remainder and pumped it through our handy filtration system. Repeated this many times. We felt like real survivalists, extracting water from a non-liquid source!

To our vast disappointment, the mosquitoes were as bad as ever. Worse, in fact. We cooked in bug hats, ate in the tent, and stayed put until just before sunset when we risked a venture out to view the show.

Day 4

By this time, word had gotten around among the countless mosquito population of our 10-mile radius that there were two live, juicy humans camped up near the rocks. Safe in my bug hat, but barely able to hear myself think over the collective buzz of whiny mosquitoes, I frantically stirred our freeze-dried omelette to keep it from burning and just as frantically picked the little buggers out of the pan. I devoured most of the omelette in the tent, (and it was delicious in flavor, if a little funny in texture) but BN doesn’t really take to eggs so he stayed outside and decided to see how many mosquitoes he could kill. He just had to stand there, and beat them against his body with his bare hands. The carnage was unbelievable.
And get this: the day before, the mosquitoes hadn’t been bad while we were hiking. We figured they didn’t like moving targets. Well, on the way down I kept my bug hat and multiple layers of loose clothing on because they followed us home! It took emotional energy just to stand up under that kind of onslaught. I felt as tired as I would have if we’d been hiking all day rather than just a few hours.
So much for our plan to stay another night at the base camp. We decided to get out while the getting was good. We dipped in the main hotspring (ahh, that felt good) suffered a few more mosquito bites while changing into clean clothes (nice stone wall for privacy) and drove away from our enemies. On our way out, we saw a mini-herd of antelope (3 of the cuties) and a huge bird-of-prey just perched on the fence all nonchalant-like. Nice!

Driving down to the lowlands, we saw for the second time the Dead Marshes (I swear they filmed the Lord of the Rings there) – miles of marshy land and pools of water, just over the mountain from the Antelope Refuge. It was beautiful in the midday sun, and looked much the same as it had on our way in, but now we thought, oh… that must be where all those billions of mosquitoes came from. They just traveled really far in their bloodlust.

I also wonder about our timing… like maybe there would have been fewer mosquitoes just a week soon or later than we were there. I sincerely hope it’s not like that all summer, for the sake of those poor antelope.

Postscript

Now that we are home, summer has begun here in Eugene and we’ve been eating dinner outside on our deck every night. Oh, the irony!

I decided we earned a few Scout badges on this adventure. I couldn’t find one about mosquitoes so I designed it myself.