Kayaking and Hiking Adventures

 For this trip, we made reservations for 2 nights at Mallard Marsh Campground at Hosmer Lake. My SIL and BIL joined us for the weekend, and managed to get the campsite next to us. So let's start with the drive and area, then the campground, and then move on to the lake and kayaking. The Cascade Lakes Scenic Byway  deserves a paragraph of its own. This leads from Hwy 58 to Hwy 97 near Bend, giving access to some great mountain lakes and hiking trails. It's a beautiful drive, the road is in good condition, and the views are amazing. You get close up views of Mt. Bachelor and the 3 Sisters. There are 2 campgrounds at Hosmer Lake, Mallard Marsh and South CG. The MM campground has 15 good sized sites. Lots of room to spread out. The campground also has no water, so you have to bring your own, and it's a bit dusty and dry. There are large trees that give a lot of shade during the day. We had to go to one of the nearby resorts to get wood. Elk Lake has some, but Lava Lake Resort

 Another section of the Willamette, and one we've done before , putting in at  Willamette Boat Landing, or Crystal Lake boat ramp  in Corvallis, and taking out at  Hyak Park  outside of Albany. We were invited to join Leanna's sister's friends on this float, and we ended up with 13 humans and 1 dog, with 9 floating devices, including a tube for the dog and it's owner! For this float, I was trying out the Akaso "GoPro" like camera that we got last year. The resolution is not as good as the iPhone, and I had it mounted so that it was taking pictures of my foot, so these pictures are all cropped heavily. But I wanted to try it out. As I've mentioned before, this is a very calm stretch of river. It was packed at the beginning, but once we passed Michael's Landing , we were relatively alone. Except for the couple in the inflatable raft smoking weed and listening to music. We took our time floating, enjoying the company. We did stop for a bit on an island a

  We seem to be going back to places we've been before lately. This week was Larison Cove, in Oakridge, which we kayaked last year . However, the water level was much lower this time. Significantly lower.  This was also a fun practice at backing up the trailer down a long dirt road with lots of potholes, maneuvering around cars. Good times. 5 of us kayaked today, including Dody and her Drippy Plum kayak. No big adventures today, with calm, flat water. Also, very few other people here on a Saturday. I took this photo to help show how far the water level has fallen recently. And I also thought the texture looked cool.  There were a few places we couldn't get to this year because of the water level, smaller coves or inlets that we could navigate last year just didn't have water in them this year. We did see some turtles and a mama duck with 9 very small ducklings. The highlight of the float was getting out of the kayaks, and swimming. It wasn't super hot out, but there was

 Two years ago, almost to the day, we kayaked the Salmon River estuary, putting in at  Knight Park in Lincoln County . The boat ramp is good, but a bit slimy and smelly. Just like the coast. In that post, I mentioned wanting to return when it was high tide, in order to explore the many 'fingers' reaching into the surrounding marshland, and that's what we did. The high tide helped us out a bit, gently pushing us along the narrow channels. We saw a ton of waterfowl, including many herons. As we went further along into the marsh, the smaller bird calls got louder and closer, although we could not see their nests. One thing I found interesting, although I did not get a good picture, was the texture of the exposed dirt between the water line and the marsh grass. Lots of small, irregular holes. I couldn't tell if they were homes, or just erosion. The temperature inland, where we live, was in the low 90s. Here at the beach it was below 70, with a nice coastal breeze. When we g