Vacation to Cascade Lakes

For this summer’s main event, we went camping with my parents and four youngest siblings. They had never been up here to Oregon, except MA and RC who made separate visits within the last year. Our apartment was bursting at the seams for a few days, while we got all ready to go and enjoyed some local activities such as touring the campus, walking up Donald, swimming in our pool, and visiting the grocery palace. We also went blueberry picking!

It was fun to host my family in my home – something I’d never done before, even when I lived on my own in my studio apartment I don’t think I had more than 2 or 3 of my family there at one time. I cooked for 8, and they liked the food. I felt very gratified. I’m like the Italian grandma we never had – “eat, eat!”

We camped at Little Lava Lake. (With views of Mt. Bachelor and the South Sister.) Our campsite was just a short distance from the water and we did a lot of swimming and rafting. RC and GC swam all the way across!

A creek came out of the lake and passed right next to our site, and on the first day BN led us on a log-riding adventure. We each had our own log, except RC and HN were sharing a big one and they kept rolling off… We had to paddle because the current wasn’t much at all… there was a deep layer of ooze at the bottom, and lots of floating crud that was so disgusting it was hard to believe it was real. It was like… like… sea serpent barf. Or something. My stomach hurt from laughing and my legs hurt from scraping them on the stumps of branches sticking out of my log.

We took day trips to various other lakes:

Waldo lake is famous for being very clear and blue. It was beautiful, the weather was nice, and the water was cold but swimmable. We had an easy swim out to several tiny islands, and took turns with the swimming goggles looking under the water. Looking out towards the deep center of the lake was an intense shade of blue.

Waldo lake is also famous for mosquitos. I’m pretty sure I got my most painful bug bites while I was there. But other than that, it’s perfect.

We took a long hike (it turned out to be about 11 miles!) on a trail that passed 5 or 6 lakes. We stopped for lunch and a swim, and RC promptly cut his foot. Mom and I duct-taped him back together and he made it home fine.

Devil’s Lake was bright green and very, very cold. After a quick dip we were chilled through. Next was Elk Lake, which was big, popular for swimming and sailing, and quite warm, at least near the beach where it was shallow for a long distance.

Our last day of swimming was at Sparks Lake. We’d spent some time and effort getting our various rafts into my parents’ Suburban along with the 8 of us… We piled into the rafts and laboriously paddled out to the middle of the lake. Then we realized it was only waist deep! Almost the entire lake was shallow enough to take on foot. The only problem was the muck at the bottom – eww, gross!

Other excursions included:

A hike up Tumelo, a mountain that’s short in comparison with the South Sister or Mt. Bachelor, but affords great views of both of those larger peaks.

We also visited a lava-flow area, with big jumbled piles of black volcanic rock.

Scrambling over piles of loose rocks is one of my least favorite things to do, so I stayed at the base and explored the meadow/creek area below. On that big boulder by the creek I saw graffiti that was quite old – some was from the 30’s. You could tell it was authentic because who nowadays would chip into a rock, “Mr & Mrs C. Gaines” ?

A striking feature of this trip was the high number of close encounters of the wildlife kind. We were adopted by a duck named Winona, who had the distinguishing characteristic of a damaged foot-web. We weren’t sure if she’d lost her flock or what but she sure loved to hang around people. She would just come strolling into our campsite to say hello. Whenever HN was feeling bored she would take a stroll down to the lake to visit Winona.

Then there was the deer. It was after dinner, pretty dark already, and the lanterns were lit and a fire was going strong. Everybody was hanging around doing various things – Mom standing at the table doing the dishes, BN and RC sitting by the fire playing guitars, and I had just finished sitting near the lantern with HN, working to fix the jammed zipper on her jacket. Pleased at my success, I moved over to a free seat between BN and GC. Looking up, I saw a humongous deer standing right there, practically in the midst of us. I gasped, there’s a huge deer in our campsite! and everyone turned to look. The weird thing is how it got so close before we noticed. She was quite large, but obviously a she since no antlers… She stood still, gazing at us with large gleaming eyes. She slowly turned her head from side to side to get a good look at each of us in turn. We just stood there, gaping… wondering if she was quite all right in the head and trying to prepare for a crazed deer to charge us or something. Finally, she just turned and walked away into the trees.

Well, it sure was a fun trip. Thanks, Mom, Dad, and Kids for the fun times. Oregon behaved itself very well for my family, and I’m looking forward to next time.