Mon 19 – Tue 20 Aug 2019
After a blissful night at Barnhouse campground, we wanted to do a short, five mile hike from the campsite towards Fry Creek and back. But the route entrance from the campground was barricaded, so we decamped, drove to the Fry Trailhead end of the route and hiked some of it in the opposite direction (back towards the campsite). We passed amongst trees strung with lichen in the pure air, took in the heady scent of sun-baked pine needles, and saw and heard a pair of woodpeckers. It was totally isolated and peaceful.
We continued our drive through the Ochoco National Forest along gravel roads, some well-made, others disconcerting, and stopped at a pleasant spot for a brief picnic lunch. Finally, after 2½ hours of driving on these gravel roads, during which we covered a mere 50 miles (20 mph average speed) and saw not a single other vehicle or person (such an empty USA), we reached a tarmacked road, whence we made faster progress towards our destination for the night.
Poppy wriggled uncomfortably in the back seat of the car, muttering that her foot was hurting, then discovered that she’d been walking all morning with a twist tie in her shoe.
For some reason, the 1980s topless model, Linda Lusardi, came into conversation. May misheard her name as ‘Linda, The Sardine’, which had us in hysterics. Can you picture Linda’s tabloid glamour career taking off in the same way if she had been called Linda, The Sardine? What if page 3 topless model, Samantha Fox, had actually been named Samantha Socks? Or Maria Whittaker had been Maria Ligature? Or glamour girl, Jordan, had tried marketing herself as Gordon? I could go on. (Dave says I frequently do.)
We passed through Prineville, Redmond and Bend, before heading west and then south to pass around the north side of Mount Bachelor. This highly scenic route through the southern section of the Three Sisters Wilderness gave us majestic views of South Sister, Middle Sister, North Sister and Broken Top directly down a long, straight, empty road. We continued south, then veered left along a small road with numerous pebbles on the verge that continuously morphed into darting chipmunks as we approached.
At last, we turned into Crane Prairie Resort, where we’d pre-booked one of their two wooden, lakeside cabins for 3 nights of luxury as a respite from several weeks of camping.
The managers had warned us that the cabins were basic, but basic can mean different things to different people and, for the price they were charging*, we were pretty sure the cabin would be sumptuous in comparison with our usual fabric lodgings. We were wrong. The price was at least double what could possibly have passed as reasonable, the cabin comprising no more than a small, wooden shack with two bouncy bedsteads and thin mattresses (no bedding, pillows or towels), a small table, four chairs, a gas cooker and wood stove, a few saucepans, mixed crockery and cutlery, a ceiling light, bedside lamp and two power sockets.
* The price for 3 nights in the cabin was more than US$93 (£77) per night. This was only a fraction less than the US$98 (£81) we’d paid in total for our first 9 nights of accommodation in the USA! (Whaddya mean, £81 for 9 nights for 4 people is a bit cheapskate? That works out at over £2 per person per night!)
[Use arrows or swipe to scroll photos.] Cabin interior – the managers weren’t exaggerating when they said it was basic.
Water was available from a nearby shared standpipe (nowhere to wash dishes), there were two communal pit toilets a short walk away (nowhere to wash hands) and the small ablutions block a few minutes walk away contained a couple of expensive showers and a sink for teeth-cleaning (but was open only between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m.). We did ask if we could put the girls through a laundry cycle as it was cheaper than a 3 minute shower.
Although the cabin and facilities were significantly overpriced, and the ‘resort’ aspect amounted to no more than the ability to rent kayaks, paddleboards and little boats for abundant trout fishing on the lake, what we were really paying for was the view from our doorway – and it was stunning!
We sat outside the cabin at our little, lakeside picnic table and gazed across the water straight to South Sister, Broken Top, Mount Bachelor and several other striking volcanoes. Little chipmunks scampered about our feet whilst, on the lake, cormorants, ducks and white pelicans with black wing tips rested or went about their daily lives. A large bald eagle with a six foot wingspan appeared from the trees to one side and soared over the lake just ahead – it seemed about to dive in search of a fishy meal, then aborted and glided away.
We chatted with our neighbours, a naturalised American couple originating from Romania and the Ukraine, and they warned us about their ‘cute but feisty’ little dog. We wondered whether we should warn them about our ‘cute but feisty’ little daughter, Poppy.
We’d laid out our sleeping bags in the cabin and it was time to head for bed. Having electric light in the cabin was a definite plus compared with our tent, but attracted an unstoppable stream of midges that collided noisily with the window screens. Having assured ourselves that the screens were intact and hung up one of our sticky fly papers to trap any strays that made their way in when the door was opened for toilet trips, we fell asleep under a pretence that the continuous, rapid sound of impacting midges was no more than a cleansing evening rainfall.
Next morning, we woke up freezing cold in our unheated, unlagged cabin at an altitude of 4400 feet. Of course, our tent is similarly unheated, but it has a double skin (inner and outer tent) and small sleeping area, so our body heat and breath has some warming effect on the air. The cabin was definitely not large, but, with room to stand up, walk between the beds and for a table, chairs and cooking corner, its volume was many times larger than our tent, so our bodies and breath had negligible heating effect on the air.
Still, waking from the cold at 5 a.m. had a bonus side as, leaving the others to snuggle as best they could into the deepest recesses of their sleeping bags, I was prompted out into the first weak light of dawn. I stood on our small verandah, quietly contemplating the spectral mist coiling and twisting up from the lake’s surface under the looming, watchful volcanoes. A small family of ducks paddled silently across the water. A few birds chirped in the trees. The rest of the world slept.
Early morning ducks on the reservoir.
After a time, I left the ducks to the serenity of the lake and climbed back into my sleeping bag, which now seemed remarkably warm compared with being outside. Around 7 a.m., Poppy awoke, went outside with my smartphone and took a single photograph that surpassed all those I’d taken two hours earlier!
Gradually, the others got up. We ate breakfast outside at around 8 a.m. The mist had now cleared and the calm lake had become reflective. The beautiful, snow-capped volcanoes of South Sister and Mount Bachelor were mirrored upside-down in the still waters, and the white of the snow was repeated in the white of the pelicans lined up along a log on the far side of the lake.
[Use arrows or swipe to scroll photos.] Our beautiful setting on Crane Prairie Reservoir.
We stayed around the cabin for most of the day, doing chores against the superlative backdrop of the lake and volcanoes. Poppy helped with the washing up, May with hanging the clothes to dry after a full laundry load. To get a drying line long enough to reach between the trees and hold all our washing, I ended up using every last piece of string I possessed, even my spare bootlaces and emergency piece of elastic. I did sewing repairs. Poppy and I headed into the lake with her airbed to find and repair the leak that had appeared when camping a couple of nights ago.
[Use arrows or swipe to scroll photos.] A beautiful spot ... but there are still chores to be done.
Finding the lake not at all cold, the heat of the day really beginning to build and remembering that the resort showers were extortionately expensive, the girls and I went for a swim in the lake, out to the pontoon, surrounded by little water boatmen, electric blue damselflies, dragonflies and, of course, the beautiful trees and majestic mountains.
[Use arrows or swipe to scroll photos.] Fun in the lake.
For lunch, the girls cooked up an ‘all-day breakfast’ and found out just how hard a full English breakfast is to cook and serve hot all at the same time – goodness knows how our British bed-and-breakfast establishments manage to do it! The chipmunks alternately darted about and stood to attention like meercats, then became increasingly precocious and ultimately quite a nuisance, trying to steal our food and using us as leaping off points to reach the top of the picnic table more easily.
After most of the day around our lakeside cabin, the heat slowly began to dissipate in the late afternoon. At this point, when most sensible people would be looking to wind down for the evening, we decided to set off by car for the Green Lakes walk in the Three Sisters Wilderness. Driving along the deserted main road, two coyotes loped across the tarmac in front of us.
We arrived at the start of the 9 mile Green Lakes walk (4½ miles out and up, 4½ miles back and down) with only just enough daylight hours to complete it if we marched all the way. So, that is exactly what we did. The walk was sensational, ascending along the side of wildflower-bedecked Fall Creek with its small waterfalls and cascades (where we saw a woodpecker almost close enough to touch), past an obsidian ridge (where we saw a marmot) and arriving in the meadow at the top to stunning close-up views of South Sister and Broken Top across the largest, emerald Green Lake. The area reminded us of Ordesa National Park in Northern Spain.
[Use arrows or swipe to scroll photos.] Green Lakes walk in Three Sisters Wilderness, and racing back to the car as the light began to fade.
We decided to allow ourselves a 25 minute stop at the furthest point to eat our picnic tea. The only other people around were those few who had already set up tents in the permitted wilderness spots and would be camping out for the night. We, on the other hand, were only halfway through our walk, with the car still 4½ miles away and the beginnings of dusk fast approaching. We set off apace, and managed to reach the car just as it was getting dark at 8:30 p.m.
A drive back to our now-chilly cabin in total darkness gave us four deer sightings in our headlight beams. Back at the cabin, we quickly cleaned our teeth from a water bottle, spitting out into a bush, climbed into our sleeping bags, and fell straight to sleep, lulled by the sonorous sound of midges rattling furiously against the window screens once again.