Days 4 & 5: Union Creek Campground, OR

It was another cold morning in Baker City, OR, so we lingered at the campground until the 11 am checkout time. By then the temperature had managed to climb into the upper 40s, but it was sunny with a light breeze. We did some shopping in town, hoping it might warm up a bit while we did so. When I finally got started, the temperature had just nudged past 50 degrees, but it was clouding up and I felt a strong breeze coming from the direction that we were heading.

The Elkhorn Mountains.

It only got a few degrees warmer after that, but it never felt warmer. The overcast sky blocked most of the sun’s infra-red heat, and the swirling wind mostly came down the mountainside from snow-capped peaks, so it felt much colder than the air temperature. But I bundled sufficiently to tolerate the situation. Though it did occur to me that much of the joy of bicycle riding comes from feeling the sun’s rays on bare skin. We will both be glad when those days return to us.

Fortunately, we didn’t have far to ride - just 19 miles, which was mostly flat, save for a good climb that started a few miles before the campground.

We had known that the campground we were aiming for was only open from May to November.  It was the first of May, but we could imagine the opening being delayed until closer to the weekend. Thankfully, it wasn’t.

We are camped at Union Creek Campground ($20, power, water, flush toilets), which is run by the USFS. They are currently in the process of getting the area opened for the season, checking all the backflow preventers, cleaning up the toilets, getting debris off of the camping pads, etc. Since the water system hasn’t been fully tested, there is a posted notice stating that the water is not potable. As a result, they have cut all camping and parking fees in half. So we are staying for only $10 per night, which was a pleasant surprise.

There are plenty of downed branches, and thus plenty of wood for campfires. However, it is nearly all pine, and burnt pine bark protects the wood itself from burning. Only a very hot fire can burn completely through the bark. So we needed to scavenge around for branches that had been on the ground long enough for most of the bark to have fallen off. That gave us fires that formed a bed of coals that were hot enough to be able to burn the ample supply of available wood that still had bark on it.

We have had only roaming cell service in most of the places we’ve been in since leaving Idaho, so we rarely have access to the internet, except in the campgrounds and some towns that we visit. We suspect that will be the case in most of the rural areas that we will be traveling in throughout the west. The exceptions will likely be larger towns, and freeway and major highway corridors. It will be sometime this weekend before we find such places again.

We enjoyed the campground. There were lots of chipmunks, so Lana was pretty well entertained. We were the only campers (besides the hosts), though the campsites are large, with lots of space between them, so even if the place was packed it would have been a very pleasant place to stay.

Luckily a tree root greatly impeded Lana's progress, but not her determination

The main attraction here is Phillips Lake, which like other area reservoirs, is drawn down in anticipation of the melting snowpack from the surrounding mountains. So we’ve seen very few boats on the lake thus far.

The wildflowers are starting to bloom.  Alea and I took a hike along the shoreline to a spot where there is likely to be an explosion of wildflowers in the near future.

If the long range weather forecast from earlier in the week does not turn out to be a cruel joke being played upon us by a sadistic weatherman, when we leave here we should starting seeing daytime temperatures in the 70s for perhaps a few days in a row. Of course, that is provided that we don’t gain sufficient altitude to lose much of that warmth. The sun that we are seeing on our second day here is a hopeful sign that the forecast may be correct.

We have a new game that we play with Lana, which we call Sherlock Hound. Due to Lana’s sensory challenge (deaf in one ear, and thus can’t triangulate where sound comes from), it isn’t an uncommon occurence when playing ball with her that she can’t figure out where the ball went. So we end up playing fetch, which we don’t enjoy a fraction as much as Lana does.

But Lana is a smart dog. I forget the name of the childhood game where a person is told they are either getting warmer or colder, but this is a variation of that game. After I’ve thrown a ball and Lana has lost sight of it, we wait until she points her head in the general direction of the ball. I then say “good girl.” If she gets off track, I use the sound that I make to get her attention, then wait for her to again point her head in the correct general direction, where I again say “good girl.” The praise intensifies when she is getting really close, and at that point she nearly always finds it without any further help. She thinks it is great fun (even more fun than watching us play fetch), and is quite proud when she can finally bring the ball back to us.