Cozumel Diving Vacation: Part 1

Cozumel Diving Vacation: Part 1

On Vacation

The Day Before Vacation

At Playa Del Carmen

Sitting on the roof of the Hotel 52 with a cafe and pleasant company.

We have been in Mexico now for 2 nights. We flew in late Saturday to the Cancun Airport, caught a easy, quick shuttle to our hotel, and have just been exploring the local town (5th Avenue of Playa Del Carmen) and enjoying the good food and tourist traps.

The court of the Hotel 52

I am going to have to do some research to figure out Playa Del Carmen. The place we are staying is pretty nice, but it is of a strange construction. Everything here is cinder block cement strutures. Rebarb and cinderblock going up to a max of about 5 floors. I am guessing that is about the weight limit for cinderblock. The construction is all done in a way that is very Human worker intensive. I don't see or hear any machines going, though there are a few buildings under construction in the area. Lots of hammers and hand saw noises. Lots of pulleys and ropes and guys pulling on them. Lots of corregated tin overhangs on the sidewalks to keep the rock from falling on the touristas. Our hotel is on Calle 52, at the North end of the 5th Ave Tourist strip. 5th Ave is, for the most part, a pedistrian only street lined with shops and bars and reastaurants and such. Big tourist stuff shops selling mexican beach shirts and shot glasses made in China. Closer to the center of town you hit an actual shopping mall and big American names, like Nike and Starbucks.

Up on the Roof is the hang-out place. Secured.

View from the Roof. There is an infinity pool up here too. But it was small and in high demand

Out where we are, the 5th ave has the same general construction. It is lined with nice street lights and walkways, and the road is a sort of cement small stone road. It is still mainly for pedestrians, but cars can (and occasionally do) drive it. One lane south bound only. Not sure how far the 5th avenue pedestrian way goes. You can tell they put a lot of money into it 10 or 20 years ago. I think the plan was that the rich area would extend for a mile or two past where it actually seems to have stopped. Or at least slowed. Lots of signs on partially built (and perhaps abandoned) buildings advertising the wonders of owning a condo on the playa. Many being sold for $100,000 American. That doesn't sound like too much for a nice condo, but I think that is price for what is essentially a concrete shell. You have to provide all of the innards. In some cases (see the pictures) that might include a floor.

The Paritially constructed place next to Hotel 52. No work going on here

A place across the way. From the window of our hotel room

And you could be buying a place downstairs while the guys are still building up. Across the street from our Hotel is a place where they have finished a couple of units going up, but the attached building and around the corner is still under construction. It has the look of construction that goes on for a long long time. I guess I need to come back in a couple of years and check out the progress.

Luxury Investments. You must be a visionary

This is a finished unit for sale (I think) there is a big hole down there. For you basement. You have to provide the furniture and the floors. There was a complete unit two doors down. The sales office and a restaurant.

This was a yummy Breakfast

Great Restaurants here. I have already had 5 much too wonderful meals. For dinner last night we went to a place that I believe was called Puerto. I had gordonitas, which were little corn tortilla pockets stuffed with seafood yumminess. Octopus in one. Shrimp in another. I believe it was some white fish in the third. With very good sauces. Hmmm. My touring partners had shrimp and grilled fish (which our waiter believed was grouper (in English)). When we sat down the guy behind us leaned over and told us that this was the right place. He was from Iceland and he and his family had been coming to this restaurant every year for 3 or 4 years already. He was very happy that we were there. I found out later that the margaritas were pretty strong. Perhaps that was the explanation for his chattiness. Or perhaps that is just the way of Icelanders.

So we are walking down 5th on our first night here. Just getting a feel for the place and looking for a place for dinner, when this guy comes up to us, all smiling. He says "Hey Amigos, good to see you again. Don't you recognize me? It is me, Carlos, your waiter from the Hotel. I work here during the day time. Don't you recognize me?"

We, of course, told him that he was mistaken and we had just gotten into town and had not seen him at the hotel. He insisted he knew us. At this point I was getting a little wary, and we walking away.

5th Avenue. Can you find Señor Frog?

The next day, the same guy did the same thing in the same place. My parter said something like "Hey Carlos, you tried this on us yesterday." He was still pretty insistent. I was going to think that it was just that guy but we walked further into town and a different guy gave us the exact same line. "Hey, don't you remember me, Carlos from the Sands!!". What is strange is that his name was still Carlos and I am pretty sure it was from the same restaurant. This time he was targetting my partner. She laughed at him and he got a bit put off. "Hey, don't laugh at me".

"Sorry," said my partner, "But there was another guy not 5 minutes ago who tried the same line on me."

He cheered up then, "Oh, Ok. Have a nice day". And we were off.

In general we learned that it isn't a good practice to say hello to street vendors that say hello to you. It is just an opening for them to make a sales pitch to you and you really don't have the time to listen to every pitch as you walk down the Avenue.  (Editor's note): It's really just deciding who to talk with, and what you are shopping for.  You don't want to chat, but if you are looking for something, and like to bargain, street shopping in Mexico can be fun.  

These signs follow us everywhere

They had this weird storm a year or so ago that floated in a bunch of sea weed (saragosum). It is still there, even though they are running front end loaders to try and cart it away.

There were lots of people about. Many of them thin, handsome non-Mexicans. We think they were mainly Europeans. We talked to the one man from Iceland and another couple from Holland. The Dutch couple we met when we were all stranded together in front of a Skin Treatment Salon during a strong but short downpour.

Speaking of Skin treatments, Would you like to sit in the front of the shop by the street and dangle your feet in a tank of water and let little fish eat the dead skin off of your feet and legs? Doesn't that sound great? It must have been a new thing a couple of years ago, but now little tank setups were everywhere in front of many different shops.

Scuba Club Cozumel

Our Hotel from the boat dock. Hammock shack on the left. Dive shop up the path on the right. 

We are going to be spending seven nights at a resort on Cozumel called Scuba Club Cozumel. This is advertised as the first club designed by SCUBA people for SCUBA people. It is a mostly all inclusive resort, but not a big or fancy one. What SCUBA special things does it boast?

• Rooms that are pretty water proof, no rugs, lots of drains and tile. 
• A significant drying rack on the porch of each room (for wet suit and other wet gear)
• Large, freshwater rinse tanks positioned on beach level.
• Large lockers near the rinse tanks (these are lockers big enough to put a couple of SCUBA tanks into should you want to do so.
• On site compressor and dive shop (for gear rental)
• Free lead and belt (unless you lose them).
• Ladders and stairs into to the sea built to accommodate people in lots of gear.
• A big dock that can accommodate 2 dive boats at a time for fast loading of divers.

It also boasts a small pool and a row of hammocks, for people that are either not diving or are relaxing afterward.

 

We were going to be there for seven days. Five days we would be doing boat diving. One day we had off for other adventure and one day (at the end) you NEED to have off because you can't travel on the same day that you dive. Actually, you can't FLY on the same day that you dive. Why can't you fly? Because the risk of getting the bends (or decompression sickness) changes dramatically if you change your ambient pressure. So you need to hang out at sea level until all of the saturated nitrogen that you built up at 80 feet under the sea is out of your system. I once look at my Altimeter on my watch when I was flying. The pressure inside that plane was the same as being at 6000 feet.

Here is the schedule on a typical Diving day. Coffee is guaranteed by 6:30, but every morning it was available by 6:00. It is still dark this time of year at 6:00, but we were there during a full moon and it was nice to go out to the hammocks on the beach and watch the moon set. At 7:00 a substantial (though cafeteria style) breakfast was served. There were always pancakes and french toast and a few different kinds of eggs and lots of fruit. We usually finished breakfast by 7:30 and then went to get our gear together.

The previous day, if you were going diving, you signed up on the sign-up list for diving. Around 7:45,  the actual divers list would be posted and you could see what boat you were on, who your dive master was, and what other divers you were going with. For our first couple of days we were on the Dive Cat (see below) with dive master Tony.

Dive Board

The Dive shop opens at 7:00. But don't try to get anything from them at that time. They are spending all of their efforts moving all of the necessary equipment the 200 feet from the shop down the ramp to the dock. This mainly means moving SCUBA tanks. On a typical day we were there, there were about 50 divers.  Two tanks per person (plus a couple of extras and tanks for the dive masters) is like 120 tanks. An Aluminum 80 (The standard recreational dive tank, an aluminum cylinder that holds 80 cubic feet of air at 3000 psi) weighs in at 35 lbs when full. That is over two tons of tanks to haul down to the dock with less than an hour to do it. So stay out of their way.

Loading Tanks

The boats start to show up around 8:00. On a busy day there would be 4 or 5 boats. Two would dock immediately and start loading tanks from the dock to the boat. This is all manual work, no carts or cranes. It takes a few minutes. As soon as the tanks are loaded, the divers board their boats. Make sure you know the name of you boat. The names are all a little bit alike and a couple of times people got on the wrong boat (at least at first). They don't usually take role call, they just count heads and go. They are in a hurry because there are two more boats to load. 

Our boat usually was sitting off shore and waiting her turn, so we didn't usually board until right around 8:30.  Carry your gear onto the boat. This can be a bit tricky. You have this heavy (~20 lbs) weight belt to carry, plus fins, mask, BCD, regulator, wet suit, and your clothes. The easiest way to carry a weight belt it is to put it around you waist. But then, if you trip into the water, you are going right to the bottom. Which isn't that dangerous unless you bang you head on the dock on the way down, or rupture your ear drums from the quick descent while trying to release your weight belt.
During instruction, they tell you NEVER go near the water with your weight belt on unless you are also wearing a BC (Buoyancy Compensator) and a connected tank (to put air into the BC).  I carried mine and handed it over to one of the staff before I stepped onto or off of the boat.

Once on board,  one of the crew will take your BCD and place it on a tank (your first tank for the day). They will also strap it down and connect up the regulator and stuff if you let them, but it is sort of satisfying to do this yourself (along with all of the recommended safety checks). Put your weight belt at the base of the tank and put your fins near that. You mask and snorkel goes into a bucket of (what I think is fresh) water sitting near the Camera water bucket. Why do you put your mask into water? I am not real sure on this, but I think it is to get your mask to the temperature of the sea water (more or less) to help avoid fogging. Got everything done? Great! now go sit up on the bow in the sun and enjoy the day, because it is going to be an hour of cruising before we get to our first dive site.

This is some of the best part of the day. All sorts of stuff is going on in Cozumel. And since most of that stuff has to do with the Ocean, and most of the nice ocean is south of our resort, you get to see all of the fun and crazy stuff that the rich tourist are involved in. More about this later. 

I enjoyed standing up in the front and watching the bright blue water slip by beneath the double prow. On a few occasions we had the excitement of stirring up some little flying fish. They were not much bigger than anchovies, but they would get surprised by the Dive Cat plowing over them and they would take to the air. They would jump up, pretty much on top of the water, with everything dry except this little rudder tail that would extend down into the water. They would extend their little fin-wings and then give a little accerating kick with that little fin and launch themselves into the air. Then they would glide, for at least twenty feet. But some stayed in the air for a few seconds and would glide 50 or 60 feet before collapsing their wings and dissapearing back into the depths.

Dive Cat

Dive Cat waits her turn

Our boat for the first three days is called Dive Cat. I am guessing because it is used for diving and it is a Catamaran. But I could be off here. Judging by the names of all of the dive boats that I saw going by there seems to be a simple algorithm for naming a boat. First you start with the words SEA DIVE or REEF. Then you add some fun or descriptive word, like CAT GIRL or HORSE and you got it. So Dive Cat, Reef Cat, Reef Diver, Sea Horse. I saw one SEA DIVE. These are all work boats, don't you know. The fun boats, like the fancy sailing catamarans and such have more fanciful names. Like Triumph.

Utilitarian. That is was the Dive Cat is. Two Hulls with a platform on top (being a Catamaran and all) The deck is wide and flat. Captain's console in the center. Tank storage and entry in the stern. Places to hang out and more storage in the bow. Twin engines in the stern of each pontoon. A little room with a head downstairs in the port pontoon. The center part of the boat is covered to both sides with a seven foot high hardtop. There is a ladder and you can go up on the hardtop to take the sun or smoke a cigarette, but there is really nothing up there. No substantial rails or seats or anything like that, you are just up on the roof.

On the Cat

Only the best people on the Cat

Since all of these dive boats are work boats, they are not speeders. They get up and plane on their flat bottoms and move along at perhaps 15 knots. The Dive Cat may be a litttle faster than some of her single hull cousins. We did pass a few boats heading South. But we got passed by some others also.

The routine for diving from Scuba Club is to head South along the coast for about an Hour. Then stop (not anchor) and drop divers for the first dive. After diver recovery, head back North for half an hour or so, then stop and do the second dive. That leaves you just a short jaunt back to the dock after you finish your diving.

Drift Diving Cozumel

In Cosumel, on the West Coast, there is a prevailing ocean current running South to North. The current can vary in intensity, but it is always there. Normally the current is not faster than a diver can swim, but you sure couldn't fight it for long. This means that you would not be able to get back to or rondezvous with an anchored dive boat. And so you do drift diving. So, both you and your boat are constantly drifting with the current. I was a little...... worried? Concerned? Freaked Out? by this idea. I couldn't get any one of the divers around to tell me a drift story that didn't  start "Man the current was bad out there when we went". And I just couldn't get an idea of what the terrain was like for the dive. In my imagination, we would be on a cliff wall that started at 50 foot deep and descended vertically down to 10,000 feet !!!! And we would have to maintain our depth exactly at 60 feet or we would surely die as we went whipping past the cliff wall at 37 MPH!!

Needless to say, reality was somewhat less alarming. On our first dive, we jumped in the water and then descended to a realatively flat plane at around 30 feet. There was some current. You could have swam against it if you were really of a mind to. But you didn't have to. In fact, you didn't have to swim much at all, other than to zig back and forth to see things. You just let the gentle current move you along to each new sight. And there were many sights to see. Lots of purple sponges and big corals and colorful fish. Then we came to a bunch of rocks, the depth dropped down 10 or 20 feet between the coral and grass strewn rocks and with 70 feet of visibility, it was pretty great. Sometimes you had to fight the current a bit to avoid getting pushed into a rock (or another diver) but it was not all that concerning. When we got to around 700PSI of air remaining, the dive master inflated a "safety sausage". This is plastic sausage balloon on a string teather. It is inflated manually (that is, you take out your regulator, put your lips to the nozzle and blow). It floats up to the surface to tell other boats that divers are surfacing. The Dive Master stays on the bottom with the other end of the tether (and the other divers) and you follow the line up (you can't hold on to it, it isn't that big of a  float) and hang out at 15 feet and do your 3 minute safety stop. While you are doing that you can look around and see your fellow divers down on the bottom who use air more slowly than you. Count your 3 minutes, look cafefully around (oh look, I think I see our boat bobbing over there), and then go to the surface and inflate your BC so you stick up in the water and the boat can see you and come pick you up. Easy Peasy. Nobody died or nothin.

Wildwood Trail - MP 9 to 12 and The Nature Trail

Wildwood Trail - MP 9 to 12 and The Nature Trail

For this section of the trail, we parked off of NW 53rd Street at the trailhead for Dogwood and Wild Cherry Trail. There is "real" off road parking there for 8 or so vehicles, but a lot of surrounding places where you can just pull off the road into the mud. That is what we did.

At this trailhead, you can either go down Dogwood or Wild Cherry until you hit Wildwood, or you can stay up on the ridge and follow the Kiel trail which runs along 53rd until it intersects with Wildwood coming up from the valley. You can also park on 53rd there at the intersection. That is around Wildwood MP 9.25 (it is really marked as 9 1/4, but I can't find the buttons to make a good 1/4 in blogger).

We decide to stay up on the ridge for now, we are doing an out and back today (want to stay off of the big wide Leif Erikson) so we can always drop down to Dogwood on our way back if we desperately need to do some climbing.

The trail winds in and out of the little creek valleys on the ridge. That is the bottom of a downed tree.

This is a lovely section of the trail. Most of the way is heavily forested with Alder but there are a few groves of Doug Fir. In some places there are some pretty big Doug Fir. But mostly Alder. (Note: On doing some investigation, perhaps these leafless trees are really Big Leaf Maple. I need to check back in the Spring). And since it is winter and the Alder are deciduous, we have some views of the river and the city.  We even have a little sunshine on us on the rare occasion. The undergrowth is also lovely and local. We see a lot of Oregon Grape (the Medium High Variety) and Sword Fern. None of the invasive (and to my mind, ugly) English Ivy or Himalayan Blackberry. It makes for much prettier walking. There is one fern we see a lot of that I think is deer fern. Deer fern can be differentiated from Sword fern because it doesn't have the characteristic sword hilt that you see on the leaves of the Sword fern. These fern, however, are growing up the side of the trees, not climbing on the ground. When I looked then up I found them to be Licorice Fern, (see photo).

Sword Fern

Here the Trail was surrounded with Oregon Grape. 

The fern on the Tree is Licorice Fern. I think the tree is Alder, but Wiki says this fern grows
grows almost exclusively on Big Leaf Maple.

We did not see many animals on this hike. My partner saw a squirrel, and I saw a Robin. No big deal except this was the first robin I have seen for the season.  That and a few new sprouts seem to indicate that nature doesn't seem to be aware that it is still winter.

At MP 11.25 we crossed Fire Lane 1. This a larger trail (for fire fighter access) and is one of the few trails that allow bikes. Well, I guess I don't know that they allow bikes, but we did have a bike ride past us... There were a couple of picnic tables at the trail intersection and we determined that we would stop here for lunch on our way back around.

Fire Lane 1. Oregon Grape. Bag O Poop

This section of the trail from the Trail Head to Fire Lane #1 is all up on the ridge. Mostly flat and easy and fun to walk. After the Fire Lane, the trail snakes down into a little creek valley with a (mostly) clean running creek and a little bridge over. Why are creeks in this park a little cloudy? Not nearly as pristine as creeks you might see up in the Gorge. I mean, I know we are sort of in the city, but I don't think there are any (or many) houses or construction or anything like that up above us, so how does the water get polluted?

We turned around at MP12.

A little word here about signs and mile posts (MPs) in Forest Park. The two main trails (Wildwood - for pedestrians only, and Leif Erikson (for pretty much all non-motorized transport) have mile markers every quarter of a mile. On Wildwood, the markers are on trees. The trees have a blue triangle painted on the wood facing in both ways down the trail at about head height. Then at about 10 feet on the same tree is the actual mile marker on a little wooden plaque. Not sure what the markers look like on Leif. I will get back to you on that. Then there are the excellent trail name signs. There are a few pictures of those above. And at the Major Trail Heads there are metal backed color maps of the park. (like the one below).

These signs are at major trail heads.

Coming back, we decided on doing a side jaunt and exited (just past the little bridge) onto the connector trail to The Nature Trail. The Nature Trail winds through below Wildwood for a short distance and gave us a good little climb back up to the picnic benches at Fire Lane #1.

The benches look a bit old but held us up OK.

On the way back we saw more wildlife. This consisted completely of joggers. My, what a lot of joggers on that section of the trail. Men and Women. Groups and singles. Young and Old. But just about all of them decked out in the latest jogging clothing and gear. My the brightness of some of those sneakers! Dude, Black tights, black shirt and bright yellow Sneakers? I think that just says "Look at me, new shoes that I haven't even had on long enough to get muddy!".

It is like the forest is occupied by a new species of animal that like to sneak up behind you and has the characteristic call "On your Left. On your Left. On your Left".

We passed through one big grove of Doug Fir and there I could see the remains of Giants. Old Growth tree stumps. The trees had probably been cut down 100 years ago. These stumps were 4 times larger than any of the biggest living trees. That tells me the area was lumbered. Perhaps strip lumbered, before it was donated to the city as a park. Still, gives some hope that forests can be regrown if we just decide to make room for them.

Netarts Bay in December

A year ago we were having ice storms and constant clouds. This year we have cold weather but record breaking dry air and sun sun sun. Very windy in Portland. Much too windy to go kayaking (you would flip over, blow into the island, and then freeze). But it is rumored to be very nice on the coast.  Let's go there.

In California, people go "to the beach". Here in Oregon, people go "to the coast". We have some beach, mind you, but it rarely gets used for the same purposes as CA beaches. Mainly you go walking on it in your warm jackets and hold the hand of a loved one and wonder what it would be like to live in California.

Today, however, We are going Kayaking. With a group of like minded (probably not crazy) individuals from Kayak Portland. We are going to paddle Netarts Bay.

A small group of winter paddlers.

Full Dry Suit. Warm AND Cool

Netarts is off to the south of the Cape Meares Headland that juts out from the Tillamook cow flats. It is a one of the many bays in Oregon that is formed between two headlands with a river running into it. It has a large sandbar (often with trees and substantial buildup) that has formed along the barrier of the river and ocean and has a shallow bay with lots of tidal influence. Today we are going to meet our friends and launch at the public boat ramp near The Schooner restaurant. There is a $4 fee to park close to the ramp. It helps pay for the clean restrooms so I am sure in favor of that. There are only 8 of us meeting today, so it was a pretty smooth and easy launch off of the public dock.

Horses on the Beach

I don't much like dock launches. No matter how I try, I always feel awkward and silly. And I almost always almost fall in. You know, you have one leg in and your butt most of the way in and the boat starts to drift away from the dock and you try to grab it and now you are off balance and surely going to roll over, but you manage to pull the boat back in closer to the dock and you don't flip over. Then you look around to see if anyone else noticed, but they are all desperately trying to not flip over and so don't see you. Deep Sigh.


How is the weather? It is December 10th and not a cloud in the sky. We are getting a late start (around 1:00) so the sun is pretty much as high as it is going to get and shiny shiny. A little wind. Temperature probably around 55. Many people are wearing dry suits (I am) but I only have one layer of light thermal on under the drysuit (I purposely didn't wear my fleece sweater).

The water in Netarts is very clear. We can see the bottom down to 6 feet very easily. Besides the 8 of us, there are a few people out in small outboards doing the crabbing stuff. You know, power out, dump your pots. Sit for a while. Go back around. Pull up your pot. See if you have any crabs. fight off the seagulls. Put the pots back down. Repeat until you are too fracking cold.

We start with a very short paddle up the beach to "Happy Camp". Not sure what that is, but that is where we paddled. Oh, look, a couple of people out riding horses on the beach. Perhaps that is Happy Camp. The water here is very shallow. Perhaps 6 inches to a foot. It is dead low tide. We are going to wait a few, hang out and catch up with friends, and then ride the tide back up the bay.

It isn't that much of a ride. Sort of a very slow drift. But the idea is, since the tide is rising, you don't have to worry about being caught in a mud bank as the water drains away under you. Even as it was, we were often running into little dead ends where the bay had not yet risen enough to get over the mud. Sometimes we went around. Sometimes we got stuck. At least once a couple of people said, "enough of this" and got out and walked for a bit.

Halfway down the bay we steered into a little area where there were a lot of sand dollars, just sitting there 6 inches down. Many live ones, but also a number of freshly dead ones that could be brought up and studied.

Low Tide Mud Banks

At one time, Netarts was a big Oyster harvesting area. In fact, for thousands of years, the Indigenous peoples lived and fished here. But more recently (early 1900's) the harvesting technology of the Europeans (Us) got a little too good and drove the local oyster population into extinction. Now, as we know for our learnings and paddles in South Carolina, Good Healthy Oyster populations are critical to the general health of the environment. They act as filters and remove much of the "bad stuff" from the water. Without them, no such filtering. So there is an active project to reintroduce oysters (Pacific Oysters) to the bay. It just hasn't been working so well. There have been some oysters found some years, but they haven't been sticking. Unclear if it just takes time, or if the local environment has deteriorated to a point that they can no longer flourish.

Afterward, we did an easy paddle back to the dock. I elected to de-boat at the ramp this time. So much easier. And wouldn't you know it, my foot got caught on my cowling and over I went.

Yes, That is the Fantastic 4 Emergency Signal !!

The Bend River Trail

Hiking The Bend River Trail

Bend, Oregon straddles the Deschutes river just where the river comes shooting down out of the Cascade mountains to plow its way through the old deep lava plain that is the High Desert of central Oregon.  On this unexpectedly nice day in early November, my Partner and I are spending a much deserved long weekend on a mini-vacation. We are staying at Mt. Batchelor Village in one of their rentable condos that sits on the bluff up over the Deshutes a couple of miles south of downtown Bend.

Originally, we were going to drive up to nearby Mt. Bachelor and do a snowshoe, but we decided to stay around town and scrapbook instead. That doesn't get us off the hook from hiking, however. Our Fitbits would be driving us crazy if we didn't get out and get our steps. We did this by going out in the morning and hiking the Deschutes river trail. This trail is a lovely forest and urban trail that winds from the Old Mill shopping district up both sides of the river into the gorge south of town and then up the river another mile or so, terminating at a little bridge that closes the loop. We entered the trail from a little connector about a third of a mile from the bridge on the west side of the trail. Today we decided to walk to the bridge and then into town on the East side of the river.

 

This trail is well maintained by the city of Bend. It is well marked and has a lot of nature and local interest signage (did you know that mistletoe can make a pine tree look like a witches broom stick?) as well as a few memorial benches and foot bridges. The trail is well used by the locals and visitors alike. Lots of joggers and walkers and dog walkers and families out for a stroll (though the teenagers don't look so happy). We are out early, and it is a bit chilly with a chance of rain in the air, but still we saw and passed many people on the trail. Since it is a loop, we passed many people twice. The second time you wave hello, it is almost like you are waving to an old friend.

This end of the trail is down in the gully of the straight and fast moving river. Sometimes you see white water kayakers out on the river, but not too often. It is a challenging stretch of the river and you can't get easy boat access in this part (you have to go up stream and try to find a place to launch where you don't have to run the rapids that kill you).  Though there is always water in the river, this is the desert, and the flora here shows it. There is lodgepole pine and its beautiful giant cousin, Ponderosa pine.  I like the ponderosa. The slightly orange color and the well formed bulk of the trees is very majestic. There is also manzanita and sage and other low lying plants. No ferns though, this isn't Portland. Lots of deer in this area too, though you don't usually see them when you are out hiking during the day. We see them a lot in town just at dusk.

As you walk the trail you can look up and see the big rock cliffs and all of the condos and houses seated up above them. A little bit of a let down, but hey, this is basically a urban walk, so having the uniqueness of this river valley so close to one of the larger cities in Oregon is quite cool.

A mile or so of walking and we are at the part of the river just across from our condo. There it is up on that cliff. This part of the river has some really large rocks and cliffs right up against the river and is a great place for a view and some picture taking.

I took like 10 of these shots. Could not get the water and hills to light correctly.
There must be a button for that on my phone someplace

Soon we come to a place where you go out along a little bridge and boardwalk around a public water works. There is a couple of big cement pipes at river level with a very strong current coming out. What is this? Well, a few miles up river is a little diversion dam that sends a good part of the river down an aqueduct at the top of the canyon. A this point in the river, some of that water falls down through a hydro-power generator and then returns to the river. The rest of it goes into a open canal and flows across east Bend for irrigation out to who-knows-where.

Further down the trail and you come to the place where the river dumps out of the canyon onto the desert. There is a car bridge to go under and then you are in the little plain where the Old Mill district is built. The river immediately becomes wider and slower and is a pretty and sluggish thing as it winds its way leasurely through the town. During the summer, thousands of people plop themselves into inner-tubes and on rafts to float down the river on a hot lazy day. Lots of fun and pretty much free. Too cold for that today. But we do enjoy the ducks and Canada Geese out swimming and feeding.

Hey Daddy, Can I play on the Saw Blade?

That is a bridge across the river there.

Bend was originally a lumber town and the parks show that in their names and decorations. Statues of horses pulling logs, saw mill themed children play structures, that sort of thing. Why, the old Mill itself has been largely preserved, including the 3 tall chimneys, an houses the local REI store. My partner and I are walking that way. I like REI. They don't mind if you walk in wearing hiking boots and carrying a pack. They even take care of it for me whilst I shop.

See the 3 Chimneys around the Bend?

It used to be that you could go into REI every year and find that one new piece of equipment that you really needed to have. I must be getting old because it is getting harder and harder to find something new. Or perhaps the new things are still there but I can't convince myself that I need them. Part of the problem is that, yeah, a LED head light on an elastic band is cool. But I have 3 of them and I don't need one with 5% more light and a cool red light too !! And I have the 5 tents I need and not sure I could use one that sets up in a tree (if you can find 3 trees just the right distance apart). The stick stove that also generates power to charge you phone is nice, but not something that I think is worth the cost either in money or in weight.

What to do then? There are these new things coming out that I think would be nice. They are what are essentially digital walki-talkis. They communicate with other ones of their kind and build up a local network. You talk to them over bluetooth from your phone and run an app that lets you send text or voice messages to other people, either in your group or more globally. So, imagine you have one. And another friend has one and he is one mile away. Then another friend is a mile beyond that. The second friend is too far away for your device to reach, so the middle friend's device will automatically act as a repeater. I could see this as being a great safety thing if there were some of these things sprinkled around, like, by the rangers. Or even if you left one hanging from a tree when you were halfway out. Anyway, the other cool thing is that they don't have to communicate at speed. If the connection gets bad, they can lower the baud rate and resend and keep trying until they can get the message through (just like a text from your phone).  I like the idea, but for it to be useful, you need to have a lot of people out there using them. Not just me and my partner. Still, Christmas is coming soon...

Enough rank commercialism. We still have a few miles to go back to the condo and lunch time is looming. We cross the river on the nice foot bridge right by the Old Mill. To our right is the Les Schwab amphitheater. Les is the guy to go to for tires in Oregon. And he is the guy to go to for music in Bend. Big concerts outdoors right on the river. I guess a lot of people get the "cheap seats" and just drop an anchor off their inner tubes and listen from the river. I understand that this summer is a 50 year Jethro Tull concert. Can Ian Anderson possible still be the front man?

That rock says "Les Schwab Amphitheate"r. Take my word for it

 

No concert today, however, so we walk south down the west shore of the Deschutes. Our next site is the big park that is the main put-in for the down river floats. Last time I was here (around July 4th) there were hundreds of people inflating rafts and slathering on sun screen for the float down the river. You sort of need a good float because even in the height of summer, the river is brutal cold. Oh my freezing bum. Over on the side is the giant sculpture made from Eddyline kayaks. A unique piece. Ahead of us is another bend in the river (is it THE BEND? maybe) and above on the cliffs are some very nice office buildings. How did office buildings get to be up there on that prime real estate? Some place up there is the Deschutes Brewery main building. Not that that is saying much, seems like you can't swing a dead cat in Bend without hitting a brewery. And some of the best beers are starting to come out in Cans!! I love cans. So much lighter and easier to recycle than glass. Here are my two current picks for beers: Buoy IPA (from Astoria, so a little off theme) and Mosaic, from just down the road from our Condo at Cascade Lakes Brewery (the Lodge has Prime Rib on Saturday and Sunday nights. It is GOOD, as is the Elk Burger).

 

The trail now turns from pavement back to gravel and pulls in close to the cliffs. The river is getting more narrow, we are about to go back under the highway bridge and enter into the little gorge again.  Just before though is one last thing.  A strange concrete structure low on the river bank. An old ferry landing? Some place for dumping logs into there river for the mill? A rock beaver dam? I don't know. I wish someone would put up one of those nice little explanatory signs.

And so we come back to the side trail that leads up the bluff to our condo property. What a pleasant hike. And we get to do it again tomorrow morning.

Tesla Charging Stations OF THE FUTURE.

One last thing. Back at our condo I notice a bunch of electric car charging stations. These are new. They have just been put in by Tesla and are just for charging the Tesla cars. These things are popping up all over the place. Now, I know that there is a good chance you are reading this from the future and are thinking. "Car charging stations? How quaint. This must be before  all of the tree's were cleared so that the sun could shine directly on cars and charge them." Of course, if you are from the very distance future, then you probably ARE a smart car. How are things? Please read the rest of my blog entries and send my AI personality copy a note.