As I mentioned in my last post, Pedro and I camped at Ice Cap Campground the first of August. We liked it so much that we went right back there the end of August. This time, we stayed in campsite #13. This was another of the walk-in tent sites and all 9 of them at this campground are recommended.
Pedro’s supervisor at work wanted an RV but couldn’t afford one. He decided that making tent camping more luxurious would be much more affordable. Pedro told me about this conversation, and we agreed that we wanted to do the same thing. Thus, the shower I showed you in my last post. Next, cots. They are carried in a small bag and can be built into wide, long, and very comfortable sleeping places. We put our inflatable mattresses on top of the cots and had an exceptionally comfortable place to sleep.
We began getting messages about the lunar eclipse, then photos came in despite the low cell signal. The eclipse was happening RIGHT NOW. We scanned the sky and could not find the moon. I pulled up the stars app on my phone and we found the moon: behind a mountain. It would be half an hour before it crested above the trees, and the eclipse would be over by then. I was so disappointed. We miss so many things in the sky because Oregon skies are frequently clouded. But this night was perfectly clear. And still…we missed it. We went to watch the sunset anyway, because that was also nice.
The one big change at the second visit was an unpleasant awakening at 6:50 am of construction vehicle backup beeping. Beep! Beep! Beep! It was relentless Friday morning, but thankfully not on Saturday. I gave up trying to sleep and left Pedro in the tent and went out and made coffee, and sat on the edge of the bluff to glare at the glaring lights on the far side of Carmen Reservoir. Eventually the sun rose.
We got over it though, because how can a person stay cranky while in the woods?
It was a very cold morning and we couldn’t avoid thinking about the change of season. We ate a delicious breakfast, watched Bernardo and Maximiliano the chipmunks fight over crumbs and fruit, and then packed an equally delicious lunch and left our campsite. The trail we followed went south, beginning by circling to the other side of Carmen Reservoir. We got closer and closer to the noisy workers. Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!
We rounded a bend and put the noise behind us, and didn’t have to listen to beeping for the rest of the day. The trail we followed this time was still along the McKenzie River like the last camping trip, but south. We were following the recommendation of fellow travelers we met the last time we camped here. They said we simply MUST walk to the Tamolitch Blue Pool, which we had vaguely heard of, but knew nothing about.
About halfway to the pool, the McKenzie River disappeared. The canyon was still there, beside the trail. We learned later that the water sinks into the volcanic rock and continues its journey below ground. This natural filtering process makes the water stunningly clear. The only time river water rushes above ground is in winter, when the course below ground fills all the way to the surface.
We were passed by about 10-12 mountain bikers at various times. We were impressed that they took their bikes across all these narrow bridges, with railings on only one side.
After two hours, there seemed to be people all over the place, so we guessed we were near the famous pool. We kept walking, and saw an overlook point, so we went over to look.
Of all the times to forget to bring my good camera!! All of my photos are from my iPhone, and so the quality is poor, but the astonishment is still possible. LOOK at that water! Look at it! That’s real!
This is the place where the submerged McKenzie River bubbles up to the surface, and then the river begins again. In the photo below, I show the river at full size as it leaves the pool.
We spotted a person down at the water level on the far side of the pool, so we circled it to the left, looking for a trail to get over there. On the way, we found a nice shady place to sit on the rocks and eat lunch. So we did that first.
While we rested and ate, we realized that a lot of people were climbing down there to jump into the lake. Now, mind you, this was the same supercooled ice water at Carmen Reservoir. We thought it was remarkable that they were jumping in. Every now and then, someone would splash in, gasp and shriek, and head right back to shore, so we knew they experienced it just as frigidly as we had when we put our hands in the river earlier.
We found our way carefully to the shore with about 15 people in their twenties. There was one older man who was trying to decide whether to jump in. Pedro began to think about it as well. I spent about 4 seconds considering, then abandoning the insane idea.
Both men decided about the same time that they were going to do it. Pedro was hot, sweaty and dusty from the hike, and thought the cold water would be refreshing. Most of the people there stripped to their underwear because for many, the jump in was a spur-of-the-moment plan. That’s what the two guys near me did as well. They didn’t think about it long, then one after the other cannonballed in. Once Pedro got to the surface, he struck immediately for the shore. The other man, who had climbed out first, laughed and said, “I had been noticing that nobody went in a second time. Now I know why!”
After Pedro got dressed again, we walked down river a little way, exploring, and then finally made our way back up the steep hill and over to the trail, and headed north toward home again.
Just as we got back to the reservoir, I noticed a rock cairn over the side of the hill. Only…it was sideways. My brain couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing: a row of rocks seemingly piled horizontally. I scrambled over the side and down the steep hill to get a better look.
Soon I realized the rocks have been drilled and all fit over a steel reinforcement bar that is set into the ground in concrete. Pedro dragged the small tree away that had knocked them over. I pushed and pushed until I got the stack of rocks upright. Then I found a small plastic engraved tag that appears to have been glued to the flat side of the top rock. I set it up, but I am sure it will soon fall off again.
Searching the web, I found a Harvey Hoff dairy farmer in North Dakota, and a Harvey Hoff who was a fourth generation owner in a forest products business from McCall, Idaho (a place close to my heart). But neither seems a likely candidate for a modest, hidden, forest memorial in central Oregon.
We came round a corner, talking about how great it would be that it was late in the day and we would no longer have to listen to construction vehicles beeping, when Beep! Beep! Beeep! alerted us that we had arrived at Carmen Reservoir once more. Damnit!
But we were in luck. That was the very last beep. We watched as the last dude backed his excavator into a spot against the hill, turned the ignition off, then climbed out and walked to his truck and headed out of there. Ahh, beautiful silence.
We had been eating well on this second trip. The earlier trip, we ate all reconstituted freeze-dried food because it was getting old and needed to be consumed before it spoiled. But I did not like a single meal of it and was disappointed about food that the whole first trip. So THIS trip, we had delicious home-cooked food for each meal.
I had baked oatmeal cranberry pecan and toffee bars prior to the trip, that we ate for breakfast with zucchini lemon muffins. Bernardo and Maximiliano loved those! We brought an avocado, fresh tomatoes from the garden, bacon, and lettuce, and made BLTA sandwiches with the rest of the bread for lunch on our hike. All of that amazing food made me forget the bad taste in my mouth left from freeze dried food weeks earlier.
The next morning, we both woke refreshed because of no beeping! Pedro had a gleam in his eye and said his dream was to drink our morning coffee in front of Koosah Falls. We brewed the coffee, poured it into Nalgene bottles, then hiked the short trail to the falls.
We sat on rocks and watched the waterfall pounding over the cliff, and drank our coffee from containers.
We had to clear out of our camp site, but we weren’t quite ready to go home. I randomly chose a hike along the highway on the way home, and that’s where we headed next.
Conscious Engagement 