Paddle Oregon 2023

Just Downstream of Santiam Confluence

August 17-20, 2023

Paddle Oregon has been the premier paddle-camping experience in Oregon for over 2 decades. It ran into some problems during the Covid years. Their prime caterer quit the business, they lost their regular organizer, and they had 2 years where they just couldn't (safely) run it at all due to Covid restrictions. In 2022 they (Willamette Riverkeeper) started up the program again but they had a number of hiccups and learning experiences that gummed things up a bit. 

Good Food

I think they almost decided to just retire the entire idea, but I am glad they didn't because this year the whole thing was clicking again. They made some changes that I think are great. They reduced the length of the trip and put it half over a weekend, to try and get more working age people to join in. I just got back and must admit that I don't miss that 5th day of paddling one bit. My, I am tired. And the food service and such was prime, delicious, and copious. Little things like making sure there were lunches available that travel well on the river (sandwiches and cold drinks to keep the lunch bags cool) were once again in play.

Paige and I had trained and signed up as Pod Leaders for this year. We were joined by veteran Pod Leader Jennifer and we three co-lead the Agate Pod (which Paige and I got to name). 

Here is how it worked. The total group is divided into pods. Each pod has 3 leader boats and 12 participant boats. I say boats because, though most boats (kayaks) have just 1 paddler, some boats (like canoes or tandems) have 2 paddlers. So the Pod size might vary from 15 to 18 or so paddlers. There were 5 pods on this trip: Agate, Gravel Bar, Oceanos, Flamingo, and Sometimes Pokey. The Pokey pod is the traditional slow pod and the Flamingo's are the traditional fast pod. The Agate pod was listed as one of the faster pods (Medium Speed. Evidently Medium was the fastest anyone would sign up for) but we ended up being at the end of the line for most of the trip. I think this is because we were having the most fun. 

The trip starts for most people by meeting at the Take-out. That is right; you start at the finish. This is because you want to leave your car there. We all loaded our boats onto a few big kayak carrier trailers and then we loaded a couple of big passenger busses with our camping and kayak gear and rode the busses to our paddle starting point. This year we started the paddle at a little town about 8 miles upstream from Corvallis called Peoria. 

The Peoria boat ramp is a bit funky and small but we had a lot of time so there wasn't that much problem getting everyone into the water. Everyone in our pod had pretty good Kayak experience, many of the people were members of OOPS (The Oregon Ocean Paddling Society).  The pods travel separately and take breaks along the river where they will, so you often find yourself leapfrogging past pods that are sitting at a prime gravel bar having a snack or taking a Green Door break. Sometimes they even have the temerity to hunt for My agates!!

Staging at Peoria

In addition to the 3 rescue trained leaders in each Pod, there is also a team of safety boats that go out, more challenging river sections. The safety team does a great job and they have the little walk-a-bout walkie-talkies that allow them to talk to each other or to a nearby pod. (That is right, I got to use a Walkie Talkie!!! It made me feel like I was 12 again !!). 

The Willamette river, in general, is not a 'white water' river. But it is the largest River in the USA that is completely inside of a single state. It is also the second largest North Flowing river (by volume) in continental US (no, there is not a larger one in Hawaii).  My point here is that there is a lot of water flowing, though usually sedately along the large valley that is the Willamette.  This large volume of water will occasionally meet up with some constrictions, rock or wood or turn induced sandbank, and that will cause a stretch of fast moving water.  Water moving fast enough that if you tried to stand, it would knock you off your feet. Water moving fast enough that you can't really paddle back up the stretch once you come down it. There are not too many of these sections. Perhaps a dozen over the 4 days we paddled, but they do lend some excitement. They often also lead to some unintentional swimming, which is what we call it when someone flips over in the river. 

Evening Eco Presentation

The first day paddle was an abbreviated paddle due to the necessary late start of the whole shebang. This was another of the changes enacted to make the event more accessible. Instead of meeting for the shuttle at 7:00am, we met at 8:00am. Another hour of sleep. This makes a big difference especially to people that may have to drive a couple of hours to get to the shuttle.  It did make for a late start time on the river.  There is a lot to do in getting on the river that first time. You need to meet your Pod. You need to get your boat and all of your gear together. The logistics team was pretty smart this year, they put the pod names on the boats when the boats were loaded up such that when they were unloaded, they could arrange them by Pod next to signs with the Pod names. This naturally put people in a good location to meet their pod, get their first "meet and safety" talk, and then help each other launch as a pod.  The boat launch we were using in Peoria was a little small and funky but all of the pods entered quickly and with little incident. Paige was particularly adept at getting Agate Pod to stage the boats up the bottom of the ramp. This was good as I was the line leader the first day and so had to launch before other members of the pod. 

I think most of the members of the Agate Pod had the skills that one might want in a Pod Leader. Most of them would have been competent to safely lead the pod down the river. But would they actually want to? I found that leading was not very relaxing. I may have been a little more hyper-vigilant than is strictly necessary and I would probably get a little more chill after a few more times leading. Time will tell. I do sort of like the feeling of being out on point, though it does wear you down.

On other days, I was sweep. The last paddler. This is a much more casual position where all you need to do is try and keep the pod together enough that the tail can communicate with the head. Well, you also have the job of rescuing anyone that falls in the water ahead of you, but that is a very rare thing. I liked being in the back and watching Paige lead the pod through a fast moving confined area. She is a good leader and the pod looked great forming a line and then shooting through the fast area. From the rear, you can't really see the river, but you can see the people in line and see when each person suddenly accelerates and shoots sideways across the river or around the corner. Such fun.

Morning Stretch and Pod Safety Meeting

Let me describe a common feature in the river. You are paddling along in moving water. Perhaps 1 or 3 MPH, with the water deeper than visibility (more than 6 feet, say). Up ahead is some obstruction in the river, usually a gravel bar. During high water, this is just a submerged feature, but during late summer low water, this thing has become an island and the river needs to go around it. So the river gets very shallow and pushes to the side (let's say to the right). Close to the gravel bar is too shallow to paddle, but there could be a lot of current going that way and you want to avoid that. The river is taking this hard right turn and you want to find the 'deep' (1-2 foot) water and stay in that fast moving water as it goes around the turn. At the end of the right turn, the river has to turn hard left again to go regain its normal channel. At that point the fast moving river has usually carved a steep bank. You want to stay away from the bank. Also, as the river goes swiftly around this left sweeping curve there is often a little embayment outside of the curve and the moving water. In that area is a strong eddyline, a counter rotating body of water that you don't want to get sucked into. Nothing bad will happen, but you will get spun around and perhaps dumped in a place with wood in the water. The current you are in, as it goes around the turn, sort of wants to push you into the eddyline or the steep bank, so you need to point and paddle to stay in the main current around the bend. We must have hit 5 or 6 features that meet this general description. We had some people hit the banks and had some get caught a little in the eddylines, but no one went swimming and everyone thought it was exciting.  I learned that I need to explain these things better in the safety briefing before we go through them. I remember that our pod leader back in our early paddles did tell us about the importance of having your kayak facing in the direction that you want to go, not in the direction you are going, when you go around these turns.

Agate Hunting and Cooling off

Now, you might want to know if we had anyone go swimming. Well.... yes we did. Quite a few of us took a dunk, including me. But we all flipped over essentially on shore when we were getting in or out of our kayaks. That turns out to be the most tippy place. The idea then is to try and get up before anyone notices you. We did have one paddler hit a rock (that I didn't see) and go over, but he self-rescued and walked himself out.  I was up in front when this happened. Someone blew a whistle to alert me and I brought the rest of the pod to a safe spot while Paige assisted with the rescue.  That was a learning lesson, to know that you job is to NOT help but to take care of the other participants. 

We had three nights of camping this year. The first night was on the ball fields at Crystal Lake park in Corvallis. This is a nice green place to camp. One of the other 'changes' that Riverkeeper made, perhaps to adjust for how hot summers are getting, was to encourage people to get into camp as late as possible. Stay down on the river. Stay cool. Go for a nice swim.  That is what we did, with the effect that when we got to camp, there was quite a bit of shade to be had especially over in the common eating area.  We had great Barbecue for dinner with ice cream bar for desert.  It was very good.  There was a local brewery and cidery there selling cold beverages as well. The Cidery had a non-alcoholic sparkling juice they were pouring which was considerate of them.

Going Through Corvallis

Day 2 was another shorter Day. We had a nice talk by the Riverkeeper Executive Director (Travis Williams) on Freshwater Mussels and we had another talk further down river by the head ranger for the Willamette Greenway. It turns out that the Willamette Greenway is state parks land that is all along the Willamette river and makes up for more than 20% of the total State Parks Land in  Oregon. And this doesn't include the two large named state parks that are down river closer to Portland (Willamette Mission and Champoeg).

Travis talks about Mussels

Freshwater Mussel feeding

Just past this stop is one of my favorite places on the river. This is the larger lagoon and rockbar at the bottom or Trip Island. This place is big enough for a hundred kayaks to pull up and eat lunch and has a wonderful deep water lagoon that has no current but is large enough  for many people to swim or practice kayak rescues and such. I had asked my pod mates if anyone wanted to practice wet exits or other things and a number of them joined me in the water to flip our boats, get out, and then swim the boat to shore. Why do such a thing? you may ask. Well, you do things for practice and fun so that they don't kill you when they happen unexpectedly.  I was very happy with the participation of the pod. 

That night we spent on some private property that touches the river just upstream of Albany. The owner was very kind to let us camp in his large field. This was a much nicer property to camp on than the one we had last year mainly because it was a much shorter walk from the river up to where our gear was waiting. Oh, Did I mention that? Though you have to bring your own gear and take care of your own camping, Riverkeeper transports the gear from one camping site to the next in a big UHaul truck. You just need to put your gear into a couple of duffle bags and lug it to the truck. It will be unloaded in the grass at the next site at the end of the day. 

The next day was our first really long day. 22 miles. Of course, you don't really have to paddle that far because you usually have a couple of knots of current. Still it was a long day on the river, luckily it wasn't all that hot.  Paige was leading and I was either in the middle or on sweep depending on how things were going. We were starting to get some stragglers now.  The deal is, not only are people of different physical capabilities, but different boats are easier or harder to paddle. For instance, a long skinny smooth material (say, fiberglass) boat coasts easier and has a faster hull speed than a short, fat, plastic boat.  This means that you don't have to exert as much energy to keep that longer, skinny boat up to pod speed.  

One of are participants was in one of the Origami Kayaks from Oru. Though it was their 'Sea Kayak' version (16 feet?) it still has folded features and some bracings that drag on the water. The paddler in that boat was working harder than other paddlers. I didn't realize this was happening, though I will look for it in the future. Poor guy was keeping up with us but he was much more tired than other paddlers and it caught up with him on the fourth day.  I am currently of the opinion that inflatables and Orus shouldn't be allowed on the paddles that have 20 mile segments.  Not sure that is something I get a vote on, of course. 

On Day 3 we ate lunch on the rock bar that is at the Confluence of the Santiam and Willamette rivers. Not much shade but a lot of rocks. I found 3 very large Agates there. They were all sort of dirty and hidden or someone would have picked them up years ago, I suspect. 

One of my Agate finds

Camping on the Bar

On our last night we got into camp late and tired. This was a camp on a real rock bar in the river. The sort of camp ground you would have if you floated the river by yourself. Adequately comfortable. We had a great meal and some very good live music.  Afterward, we were surprised to receive an excellent talk on the politics of the Willamette river by Brent Walth, one of the guys in our pod. Turns out he is an author that wrote a pulitzer prize nominated book on the Oregon Governor whose political actions took the first steps to clean up the river and establish the greenways and parks along it. I have ordered the book,  it called "Fire at Eden's Gate" and is about Governor Tom McCall and his efforts to clean up the Willamette River. 

A smoky sunrise. Fires in the mountains.

These guys were our live music. They camped with us
and then came down to sing us out on our morning launch

On the last day of the paddle we stopped at a chunk of the greenway property that is just upriver from Salem. This 'island' is surrounded by water only during the winter. It has this big seasonal back channel that up until a few years ago was choked with an invasive weed (whose name I need to look up).  Willamette Riverkeeper, in cooperation with Oregon State Parks, has worked to eradicate the invasive and replant indigenous species plants. What this has led to is a huge field of beautiful Wapato growing in that (seasonally dry) back channel. We stopped the pod on a sandbar to hear a talk on the project and then followed a little trail back for a viewing of the Wapato field. My lord it was HUGE. I had no idea that Wapato grew like that. We have been seeing a lot of the arrow leafed plant down the river this year. We saw so much of it that I commented on the growth (albeit only to myself).  But this field was a order of magnitude beyond what I expected to be seeing.  The pictures I have don't really do it justice and I wasn't up to walking deep into the field for full surround pictures, but you can trust me on this one.  Of course, this is just one back-channel field. There must be hundreds up and down the river that suffer from the same invasive and could be returned to their natural state with some intervention. Will they stay this way or be re-invaded? Changes to the river itself, back to a more natural state, may be necessary to long term success. 

Changes to the river? Yes, especially along this stretch of the river there is massive amounts of RipRap that has been placed to stop the the river from eroding the 'owned' land.  RipRap is just huge stacks of large stones (chair size) that are dumped on the steep slopes of the river to stop the river encroachment. They are really ugly and not safe to climb on or land on. They also force the river to go places it may not want to go and it stops the river from doing much of the lowland flooding that it used to do. The thing is, lowland flooding is a water storage mechanism. It is how massive flooding is prevented. It also something many species need to live and thrive. But There Is So MUCH of this RipRap. Travis talked about possibly removing some of it in some areas where the owners and the states can agree, but it would be very expensive and difficult to remove.  Dumping something into the river has always been easier than pulling it back out. I would like to find an article on this RipRap. Who put it there (Corp of Engineers?) and who paid for it (The government?) and who did it benefit? Not sure I have any pictures of it. The RipRap is not the scenery that is usually photographed.

We then proceeded on through Salem moving to our take-out point at Kaiser Rapids park.  Just as we entered Salem we had one of the trip occurrences that shows the excellent safety and paddler support services that Willamette Riverkeeper provides. One of our paddlers had been struggling and he started getting back spasms and really needed to end his trip. We called in the safety boat team and they phoned in for a boat and paddler pickup at a nearby boat ramp. No fuss easy pickup and our guy was safe and happy.  On the rest of the pod went through Salem. 

A little Casual Rescue Practice

The very end of the paddle is sort of a funny thing. You arrive at the exit ramp and you help everyone haul their boats and gear up off of the very long ramp and.... now everyone sort of walks away to load their cars and go home for a shower. If you thought your were going to get a "End of Paddle Pod Picture" your were sorely mistaken. There was END OF PADDLE ICE CREAM from Riverkeeper, however. That  was nice. So, you get your car. Load your boat. Hell, help a few other people load their boats also and now you can go home for that shower. 

So. A great trip. I really enjoyed meeting and talking with all of the interesting people that were in the Agate Pod and I certainly appreciated them allowing me the chance to be one of their Pod leaders on this 4 day adventure.

Agate Pod Heads Out

Waldo Lake 2023

I haven’t been up to Waldo Lake in a few years and I had forgotten how incredibly beautiful the area is. This time of year (Mid September) the nights are cold enough to kill off most of the bugs but the midday sun is still hot and the lake water is still swimmable. I reserved a campsite at Shadow Bay campground and 4 of us (plus our new puppy, Rory) enjoyed a few days of natural wonder.

The campsites at Shadow Bay are primitive (no utilities) but they are generous in size and have a lot of trees to provide some privacy from the neighbors. It is a short walk out to the lake and plenty of little beaches where you can leave your boats for a couple of days.

The Waldo Lake area has been hit by a couple of wildfires in the last two years and things have changed a lot. Shadow Bay, down at the South end of the lake, has been spared, but the West side of the lake (that is hike or paddle in camping) is all burned and the campgrounds on the North end of the lake are currently closed with no listed reopen date. I don’t  know if they are burned or just too close to the burn areas for comfort. The far north of the Lake is a large historic dead zone. I remember hiking it 10 years ago and it was all dead trees. I don’t know if it is an old burn or if it was killed by some bug infestation. I don’t remember it looking all that burned, but burns are kind of funny. Looking at the new burn area, just across the lake from where we are camping, what you mainly see is dead trees. These are pines that are full of brown dead needles. They don’t look burned. Now down underneath them in many places you can see burned logs and such, but most of the undergrowth is green again just one year after the burn. I imagine that in 5 years all of the dead trees will be barren of needles and branches will be falling. Then the trees themselves will fall. Then perhaps the area will look like the dead zone in the north.

Waldo Lake has a number of stories and myths about it. Things everyone knows that may or may not be true. Here are some things I have read and heard: I will tell you the stories and then fact check them. What fun.

• Waldo is the second largest lake in Oregon.
  Wow. I guess Oregon doesn’t have that many lakes. Presumably the largest lake is Klamath. I am also guessing that doesn’t count some of the man made lakes that are the Columbia river on the Oregon-Washington Border. I am surprised that Billy Chinook (a man made lake on the Deschutes) doesn’t map in there. [fact check: turns out there are many ways to measure size (volume, surface area)  and different sites say different things. Waldo is the second deepest lake after Crater Lake)
• There are no fish in Waldo because the water is too pure.
  
  No algae. Nothing for fish to eat. I will also note that my friends and I saw no sign of Bald Eagle or Osprey - a sure sign of larger fish.
  (fact check: Quote: It’s also one of the most oligotrophic bodies of water in the world, meaning it’s low in plant nutrients and high in oxygen, making the water exceptionally clear and blue. Me: The answer seems to be that there are fish, just not many: The two primary species you can fish for are brook trout and kokanee which naturally spread throughout the lake making them difficult to target.)
• Waldo is the headwaters of the Willamette River. I have been over to the North West corner of the lake where there is a little sign on the outflow creek that says so. (fact check: Waldo is the headwaters of the North Fork of the Middle Fork of the Willamette River. Well, I guess that clears that up).
• Waldo has no in-flow. Thus the clear water. It is all spring from the snow melt. I know this is a little wrong because I saw a tiny creek flowing into the lake on my hike around the south end. Perhaps it means no rivers from the mountains. (fact check: Wikipedia says it has no permanent inflow. The only place that says there is only spring inflow is an old blog post by me. Ha)
• Only Electric motors are allowed in Waldo. (Well, and sailboats and people power). Because of this, there is very little boat traffic on the lake. (fact Check: Since 2010. Also, a speed limit of 10pmh. Good news for when those electric waverunners hit the market)
• The lake is 200 feet deep in some places. When you paddle there the water is so blue. It sort of redefines the color. Evidently there is a thermocline at around 30 feet in the deep water and it is REALLY cold below that. (fact Check: Max depth of 410 feet. Over where our camp was, it was less than 4 feet deep for a hundred yards off shore).

We did two excursions while here.

The first was a 4 mile out and back hike (with Wife and Puppy) clockwise (south) around the lake trail from our campsite. This is a beautiful trail, level and well wooded. We let our puppy run a bit when we got away from people. She had never been off leash in the woods before and she had a great time. Before I had a puppy I always used to get exasperated when people would let their dogs run and the dogs would come up to me.  We didn’t let Rory do that but I think that was because we got lucky and didn’t run into anyone when she was too far out front to catch her. Am I now one of THOSE people? We hiked out to an old winter shelter on the very South tip of the lake. This was a large wooden leanto. It had one open side that had an iron wood-stove set up in it. In the back of the shelter was a smooth raised platform big enough to sleep 10 or so people. I think this was to shelter cross country skiers or snow shoe(ers) in the winter. This shelter is maintained by Lewis and Clark University. That is my wife and my daughters alma mater.  

Lots of scrub pine and mountain huckleberry. No berries on the huckleberry on the trail, but lots on the bushes around my campsite. I guess whatever eats them doesn’t come into where the humans are. The south end of the lake has a lot of low lying terrain and bog. The mosquitos are supposed to be much worse on this end of the lake which makes the north shore campground more popular especially in the summer.

Rory and Paige came out to see us off

My second excursion was with my sister-in-law and her husband. We took kayaks and paddled due West across the lake from our campground. You have to be a little careful crossing the lake. Winds tend to blow up, especially in the afternoon, and if you have a lot of fetch (open water upwind of you) large wind waves can develop that can threaten small boat operators.  Today, however, our weather was grand. We were a bit chilly in the light wind but had not problem working our way over to the West shore. Once there, in the lee of the shore and trees, we could rest and observe that year old burn area. I will stick some pictures in. Lots of dead trees. Very few completely burned trees. Presumably the things that burned had been standing dead wood before the fire started (and so already dry and ready to burn). That means that all of these still standing and unburned but clearly dead trees will be what goes up in the next fire. I don’t understand why all of this wouldn’t just catch and REALLY burn in a year or so.

We paddled back to our campground by going counter-clockwise along the shore and ducking into little places to rest and such. There are a number of places where seasonal creeks have washed sand and mud down from the local hills over the centuries and formed places where there are sand beaches and long slowly deepening bays. Great places to land a kayak and get out to stretch your legs. There are numerous hiking and kayaking campsites around the lake but I am not sure which ones of them are still open in the burn area. I know that campfires are not allowed anywhere outside of the official campground fire rings.

I had planned on paddling by the day use boat ramp just to check it out, but it must be tucked back in a hidden bay because I just didn’t see it from our meander around the lake. We ended up doing a 4 mile leisurely loop.

It is very quiet at Waldo. The highways are a long ways away and there are no nearby trains or airports. No loud motors on the lake. Most people aren’t even using generators for their rigs. I had a portable solar panel that I was playing with and had great luck keeping my battery charged and my little refrigerator cold for the couple of days we were here. I did turn my fridge off at night and relied on the frozen quart of water in the little freezer to keep things cold at night.

I have to remember how wonderful this place is and make sure and come back again next year.

Adventure at Fort Stevens

We are spending a few days on the coast at Fort Stevens. This is our second trip to this nice state park and campground. It is high season in the mid summer and the camp is packed with people, cars, and bikes. I had no idea that so many people did group camping. There are many single campsites with multiple tents, but also a few adjacent campsites with groups that are obviously together. The people across the road from us, for instance, have 3 or 4 campsites and have 3 of these large shelters set up. They are like 10 foot high and have rigid structures and strong plastic weave outer, outer with doors and windows. They look a little like the temporary garage structures I have seen in front of people's homes to keep the sun off their new car. They are certainly big enough for a car. This group has 20 or so people and they have one of the structures set up with 2 picnic tables (they must have carried one over from the campsite next door) and a nice camp kitchen set up in back. Big prep tables and a big portable stove along with many identical plastic crates with food and cooking gear. They also have a HUGE pile of firewood. Can’t believe that drug that big a pile in here. I wonder how long they are staying.  They also have one of those big stainless steel fire pits that have shown up in the stores recently that are made by the same company that made my little wood burning solo stove. I guess the solo stove guys made it in the business world even though their products were too damn expensive. 

Lots of kids running around. Check that, lots of kids riding around. Paige says she has memories of going on family trips to camps like this and the kids were allowed to ‘ride the loop’ all by themselves. That is what is happening here. Gangs of kids riding around the loop (often in the wrong direction) pretty much ignoring the car and truck traffic. When you are driving you just have to come to a stop until they pass you because there is no telling what they are going to do. And they give you funny looks like “what are you doing driving in the road, mister?”. Paige says I am practicing my grumpy old man act. Who needs practice?

Lots of this octagonal net tents around

Is this really the only vehicle
picture that I took?

And what are they riding? There seems to be a profusion of new personal vehicles available of late. Especially new e-vehicles. Bikes, of course; all sizes. Many of them either electric assist or full electric. A few electric long skateboards, being ridden by two at a time. Seems like there are 5 identical little girls on tiny pink bikes with tiny pink training wheels. Maybe it is the same girl and she is just riding round and round the loop. There is a thing that looks like 2 scooters glued together with on upright handlebar. The bottom parts make a V and you put a foot on each of the legs and sort of skate back and forth to go forward. Seems to work just fine. Saw some adults in electric recumbent tricycles. They were blocking traffic because they were sort of the in the bike lane but they were really too wide to pass and they couldn’t decide which laws they were following, car or bike.  And it does seem like all of the adults are riding some kind of eBike. Some have the ones like I do, where you just get a little assist when you peddle (but you have to peddle). Others have the big huge heavy ones with the big wheels that you can just crank up the throttle and go. I saw one couple ride by on ones where they had given up the entire “this is a bike” thing and they had no pedals. I guess they were small electric motor scooters.  

All of these new electric vehicles, including one zooming down the street with bright lights that was the one wheel kind that you stand on and lean forward. The thing you don’t  see is the original vehicles of this ilk, the Segway. They just never caught on.  I suspect that they were too expensive and maybe just so ahead of their time that people didn’t believe they were useful. They were quite a bit larger and more expensive than any of the vehicles we see zooming around at the park. 

And this is all so new. I don’t think you would have seen so many different eVehicles at a state park even 5 years ago. The eBike makers must be making a bundle. 

The people in the campsite next to our just came over and introduced themselves and offered me a ice-cream bar. So nice of them. And it was delicious. Some sort of coconut and cream bar. They are Spanish speakers, so I wonder if it is some treat from Mexico (oh, they just stopped by again and I saw the box, from Mexico). There are also a lot of people speaking some Slavic language, perhaps Russian. There is a large Slavic Church group here (they have a huge passenger bus). Paige talked to some of the people in the group and they said that some of the larger churches will reserve an entire loop for a week for their family camps. Wow. We got in here on a last minute cancellation, so perhaps one of the churches had released a few sites. 

And what about us? What are we doing here? We are doing a complete load-out Scamp test. We have our kayaks. We have our bikes. We have our hiking gear. We have our wetsuits and boogie boards! We are going to do a day of each thing. 

There is a lot to do here at Fort Stephens. When we first arrived, we rode our bikes on one of the many bike trails over the beach access. There we saw the famous shipwreck on the beach and walked down the strand for a bit. There were a LOT of people on the beach, but a 15 minute walk will still get you to a piece of sand where you are all by yourself. Today (the next day) we got going a little late but we still took our boats out to the little lake that is in the park and paddled the length of it. It is less than a mile long and very skinny. It is one of the many long skinny lakes in this region that have been created by the many rolling sand dunes that define this part of the coast. There is a high part, then a low part, then a high part, then a low part. The low parts often flood making a marshy area or a lake. The lakes are pretty shallow and this one had a lot of weed growing in it. We also saw these large soft growths some the size of a football growing near the surface down in the south end of the lake (where people don’t go so much as there isn’t a road there). We ran into a ranger giving a kayak tour of the lake and asked him what they were. He said they were Brylians (ok, I will look it up when I have some Internet coverage). 

I spent the first part my afternoon riding my bike around on some of the bike paths that I have not traveled. I stopped at one of the historic gun emplacements that are scattered around the remains of the old army camp. The first one I stopped at was Battery Russel. It is a large Cement bunker with mounts for 2 or 3 big guns and lots of rooms for stationing troops and hiding from explosions and moving shells around. Though this structure was built in the late 1800s it had been upgraded and was in use during WWII. In fact, it has the ‘honor’ of being the only American Mainland target that was shelled by a foreign power since the war of 1812.

Wait, that can’t be true, I know that the oil rigs north of Santa Barbara were shelled. Something in Southern Oregon was also shelled, or maybe that was a fire balloon. Still, attacked. I need to research this. Once again, I will have to wait until I have internet. The area we are camping in is very nice but it doesn’t have enough cell phone signal to do anything. Not sure what good telling me I have 1 bar if you can’t actually do anything with 1 bar. Might as well be 0 bars, you know what I mean? Internet says that Fort Stevens was the First mainland military base to be attacked by the Japanese. They fired 17 shells and took out the camps baseball field backstop.  You know what else I found? There are 2 Forts named Fort Stevens. One is near Washington DC. They are both now National Parks and are both named after the same guy. 

I continued riding the bike trails and followed them to the main part of the historic Camp Stevens. There are a number of batteries there from various eras (starting just post civil war). I walked around some and took pictures. They were of different designs, presumably because the eras had different building materials and different requirements for the guns. There was also a structure that controlled the detonation of underwater mines that were place in the harbor and then exploded by remote control wires. I didn’t know mines were used that way. 

Old historic forts like this are kind of funny. I mean, they are not doing anything to restore or maintain most of the fortifications. They cut the grass and put up fences when things get too dangerous. I guess they are interesting to see, but they can’t last too long except as rusted out hulks unless they are repaired. And the most interesting things about them, the guns, are long gone. Well, there are a few left but most of the biggest ones (like from the late 1800’s) were scrapped a long time ago.  

A great thing about the major bike paths in this park is that they do not follow the roads. They go to the same places (generally) that the roads go to, but they go through the woods, follow old canals, or go down the dune lines usually quite distant from the car traffic.  They are very scenic bike paths, lots of view of lowland marshes and big Sitka trees. Just be careful to stay on your side because when you round that corner ahead, one of those huge big wheel eBikes could be barreling your way and those puppies are too heavy to dodge well. (Good thing I was on a light 18 speed and I could do the dodging).

Every campground should probably get a bug report. Oregon is pretty blessed with a low bug population (at least on the west side of the Cascades). Here near the mouth of the Columbia I am happy to report very few mosquitos (say, you kill 2 a night), even fewer biting flies (1 in 2 days) and not that many red midges (3 or 4, and I don’t think they were the biting kind). One strange thing did happen to me. As I was riding my bike home from the old Military base my ankle suddenly hurt. It felt like I had twisted it. I was riding my bike quickly down the smooth paved path so hard to see how that possibly could have happened. So I ignored it. When I got back to camp, it still hurt. It hurt to touch and it hurt a little to walk. So I pulled off my shoe and sock and examined it. There was a suspicious red spot there, about the size of a Nickel. In addition, my ankle was starting to swell some. I don’t know what did it, but something either stung or bit me. Something that doesn’t feel like any traditional bee or wasp sting that I have had. Later on (after a couple of hours) the pain started to feel less like a sprain and more like a sting (or like a burn). This morning (12 hours later) it still hurts on occasion but it really itches. I wonder what tagged me? (Update, that puppy itched for nearly 2 weeks)

Last night I walked around our little loop area at camp. The family camps had all gathered together in groups of 10 to 15 around roaring campfires and were having social times. One group was telling stores (perhaps ghost stories). The group just a couple sites down from us had out a guitar and a couple were singing some what I imagine were folk songs. They were in some Slavic language and the people were singing harmony parts. In many parts of the songs most of the people in the circle would join in. It sounded pretty good but I did not recognize the tune or the words. 

The other big difference about the being over here amongst the large family (church?) groups is that there are no big RV’s. in the other loops there are all of the Mega RV’s parked next to each other, over hear it is all tents and pop-ups. Our little SCAMP is the largest RV in this section of the loop. 

Walkway out at the tip.

A freighter on the Columbia

The Jetty

The Observation Platform is closed. The stairs are broken. Lost of construction is going on 
on the Jetty itself. They have a road constructed to bring in rock from a temporary landing port
on the Columbia.

On our last day here we went out to the spit and Jetty that is at the mouth of the Columbia river. We had hoped to go up into the advertised observation platform but that was closed. There are a bunch of big parking lots and additional beach access areas out there (5 miles from the campsite). The parking lots are very large and were essentially empty. One or two cars in each. A huge empty beach. And this is on a wonderful day during the summer. Is this the height of occupancy? No wonder they haven't repair the observation platform, no one is using it.

One Day we hiked the Fort to the Sea Trail. See Here.

One day we went to the beach to go boogie boarding but we decided it was too cold so we just lounged by ourselves in the sand and sun on an empty beach.