You may have noticed that we’ve been looking for and hanging around reservoirs. We like to find bodies of water particularly when traveling in dry high desert environments like southeastern Oregon. So we are on our way to Sage Hen Reservoir in Gem County, Idaho. Now why the heck would we be trekking hundreds of miles eastward across Oregon just to find another dang lake?
Well, I’m glad you asked. We have three good reasons: Our best Nevada City buddies, Cat and David, will be at this lake in the West Mountains of Boise National Forest northeast of Boise and Cokie has two friends that she babysat when they were tiny children. Sabrina lives up in the Idaho panhandle near St. Maries and her older sister, Ann-Scott, lives in Spokane, WA. just across the border.The plan is to meet Cat and David for a few days of camping together before they head out to hook up with a white water touring company to kayak the Salmon river across Idaho. David is an avid kayaker and has used the company for years but this is the first time Cat will be drifting with him during the entire run. She will be in one of the tour rafts holding her breath while David runs the rapids! Sage Hen Reservoir is perched at an elevation of 4900 feet among towering Ponderosa pine, Engelmann spruce, Douglas fir and Grand fir. There are plenty of berries to pick and the wildlife includes deer, elk, black bear, goshawk, woodpeckers and boreal owls. The campground host came by one evening to let us know that a large wolf had been spotted in the area. Ah! Nature! Now the real adventure actually began as soon as we turned off of highway 55 at the gravel forest road. We unhooked the Honda tow car and began our trek into the forest with Kae driving the Pod and Cokie behind driving the Honda. Now suffice it to say that in some 123,000+ miles we’ve had our share of washboard gravel roads but this 14 mile doozie was the worst yet. Hair pin turns, bad signage, backtracking, several “discussions” and dust, dust, dust made us about 2 hours later than expected. Cat and David were very, very worried that we weren’t going to show up and they were thinking of packing up to go to a comfortable hotel. Well, ha ha, the intrepid Bedouin Broads showed up, worse for wear and ready for wine and whine!
We loved our short time in this green, lush forest with these sweet people but kayaking was calling to them and we were anxious to head north to visit Sabrina & Ann-Scott who we hadn’t seen for 14 years!
Crazy ride!
David asked me to take some pictures of the reflection without showing the trees.
The patterns were made by changes in light, wind and a few ducks passing through.
1 comment:
This is lovely. I would have been ready for some wine and whine as well.
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