Friday November 1, 2013 Loon Lake, OR.
A day at Loon Lake
Note: I’ve made several posts today, so you might want to go back and start reading?
It was a real peaceful night in the forest where we camped. It misted most of the night, but didn’t really ever rain. The good part about the light drizzle is it made the night temperature on the warm side which was good, because the wood for our fire that was available in the forest was a bit on the damp side so didn’t put out a lot of heat, but the fire was good just the same.
We broke camp around ten AM and instead of heading for Roseburg, Steve wanted to check out a fishing spot on the Umpqua, only thing was he didn’t really remember where to go, so we ended up in a section that one could kayak and fish, but after I looked around and felt the cool breeze on the river, I opted to not kayak, but told Steve he could go ahead and fish, but I’d just take a nap. After Steve thought about it some more and felt the wind, we decided to go to Loon Lake, off of highway 38 which is not too far from Reedsport, OR. .
We drove around for a bit to see what the road had to offer as far as access to the lake. Not too much as much of the stuff here is closed for the winter.
We finally found a place on the east end as we were just starting to leave the lake, so we parked by the road and packed our kayaks and stuff to the lake shore.
This is the Umpqua River access spot that we checked out and were thinking of kayaking and fishing, but we didn’t because of the cool wind.
This is the spot on Loon Lake where we put our boats in the water. My boat is in the grass there.
I decided to go left and up the creek and Steve decided to go right and down towards the dam for some deeper water to fish and I would catch up with him after I checked out the creek that entered the lake.
This is the creek entrance as I entered it.
The creek was quite a channel with eight to twenty feet high sides so I couldn’t see anything except what was in the channel.
Here’s another view of the channel as I paddled up it.
Eventually I passed under this bridge and continued a little further.
I was ready to turn around, but this kind of channel is one that sucks you on as the further you go the nicer it gets as it gets narrower and the trees start to hang over it nicely.
Several times I heard big type animals sniff or snort the air as I passed, but could never see what was doing it? They were just on the other side of the brush along the bank.
I was glad to finally see the end. A big tree had fallen across the creek recently and was blocking the channel completely.
The is the tree as I approached it.
Closer inspection showed no way around this one.
So, I turned around and started heading back to the main lake part.
This is the view as I just came out of the channel into the main lake.
I headed up the lake looking for Steve. The lake had a lot of summer type houses and cabins on it that looked like their only access was by boat.
This is a picture of the main part of the lake.
I finally caught up with Steve. He said he’d had a few fish on and after awhile we headed on in.
We put in and loaded our boats and stuff in our rigs. Steve said something about going up to look at something in one of the camp grounds and took off without me, thinking I’d catch up or something. I took off and didn’t see him where he said he’d be, so continued down the road to look for him. I didn’t find him.
I stopped down the road a bit and decided to give him a half hour to show up or I was going to leave the area as no telling where he was?
Five minutes before his time was up, I heard his Jeep coming down the road.
This is where I waited for Steve to show up. I had dinner here while waiting for him.
Before Steve showed up I had decided to go south back to the Arizona Lodge and back to my rock quarry camp. Steve wasn’t too happy about that.
Although, after he thought about it, he realized some rain was coming in and he would have had a hard time dealing with it in his rig
One of the reasons I wanted to go back to the Port Orford area was I have been having some starter problems with my van and wanted to find a parts house and order a new starter, before I got stuck somewhere with my van not able to start, which isn’t a good thing when one is messing around in the boonies a lot.
I’m nice and snug in my van at the rock quarry which overlooks the ocean, so let it rain if it wants.
The only thing of concern is there is a loader machine parked here that wasn’t here when I left for the trip. But, tomorrow is Saturday, so I hope they aren’t working, but we’ll see. I’m right in the middle of it,, if they do.
Tomorrow, I’ll go down to Port Orford and see if I can find a parts house and order the part. If it’s not raining a lot, I might kayak the sixes river down near it’s mouth after that, or if it’s raining a lot, I’ll just take it easy in my van all day.
That’s it.