lakes – Page 5 – The MoHo and Other Traveling Tales

Back to work

After being home just part of a day, it was time for me to make up for two and a half weeks traveling and head back to town to work. As the weather deepens into winter I will be working from home more often, but I still have to go to the Soil Survey Office in Klamath Falls on a regular basis to get “official” emails on my “official” government computer, and check in with each of my four bosses. Just thought it might be fun to share my early morning ride with you.

Rocky Point is about 30 miles or so west of Klamath Falls, and Klamath Lake is nestled into the basin between here and there. The morning commute is never boring, and what I love most about it is the lack of cars. Sometimes I will see 2 or 3 cars at the most traveling west to Medford, and maybe a truck or two will pass me going east.

On a clear morning I can see Mt Shasta in the distance as I climb over Doak Mountain. The sweetest moment of my 35 minute drive however, is when I round the big curve and the southern arm of Klamath Lake stretches out before me. This morning my timing was just right to catch the early light over the lake. “Commute” is a relative term, don’t you think?

September 28 Highway 12

A LOT of photos for this day of traveling Highway 12 are linked here>

Today was a driving day. We weren’t sure where we would end up, and only knew that the route would follow Scenic Highway 12, one of the most dramatically beautiful drives in the west. I have traveled this route before, on other trips, but each time it is a new experience. Each time the aspens on Boulder Mountain are a different shade of green or yellow, the canyons varying shades of clarity, red or hazy. Today there was a lot of haze and smoke and I wondered if possibly there were forest fires going on somewhere. We haven’t watched TV or listened to a radio in many days now, so I really have no idea what is going on out there.

When we left Torrey this morning it was windy and chilly enough for long pants and sweatshirts. Gasoline cost a staggering 3.29 per gallon, with the advertised 3.09 per gallon only for 85 octane ethanol, not something we want to put in the MoHo. We never would have made it up all those grades!

The road is two lane, very rough along much of the way, with many steep grades and curves, including the hair-raising 14 percent downgrade off the hogback. We thought we might like to hike Calf Creek Falls, both the Upper Falls and the Lower Falls have trailheads not far south of Boulder. But it was hot, much too hot to leave the cat in the MoHo without air conditioning even if we could take the dog. The white hot heat made hiking seem much less attractive to us anyway, so we decided instead to make it a looking and driving day instead of a hiking day.

Bryce Canyon National Park is on this route as well, a few miles south of the highway ,and we decided against braving the crowds to be tourists at the overlooks. We both have hiked Bryce in the past, and most of the trails are steep and hot, even though gorgeous. Even outside the park, however, the colors of the hoodoos are every possible shade of orange sherbet, pink, cream, white, and red. It’s pretty to look at, but not inviting to hike because the rocks are soft red claystone, crumbly and shifting underfoot. My soul love is slickrock, and solid cliffs of Wingate, so I am content to enjoy the colors and the hoodoos and move on.

I spent part of the drive reading aloud to Mo about 90 different hikes in Canyon Country in the WOW hiking guidebook I bought back at the Capital Reef Inn. So many of the truly great hikes in this part of the plateau involve many miles of rough driving down the Hole in the Rock Road just north of Escalante. The road is the gateway for many famous slot canyons and the canyons of the Escalante River, but they will have to wait for another time for us. I read about backpacking the 38 miles through Pariah Canyon and wondered if I have a trip like that still in me. It’s all downhill, mostly on the canyon floor wading in the river, with slots so narrow you have to carry your pack in front of you to slide through. Maybe someday. It could be a lifetime trip like my Cataract Canyon raft trip turned out to be. Who knows. But today, driving highway 12, I added it to my bucket list.

After a short break and walk at Red Canyon, we turned south on Utah 89 toward Kanab, and then turned west on Highway 14 toward Cedar Breaks National Monument and Cedar City. At the top of the pass, again at 10,000 feet of so, is the lovely Navajo Lake where I camped a bazillion years ago when my kids were just little. It was a different time of year, with the green aspen I remember so clearly all now fiery yellow, gold, red, and peach. We stopped for the night at Duck Creek Campground in the Dixie National Forest since the Navajo Lakes camps were closed for the season. Tonight we had our last campfire in the mountains to accompany a card game before we watched the night sky darken.

I am amazed at how quickly the landscape shifts as we travel. It often isn’t a gradual change, suddenly we are in desert, then in spruce aspen high mountains, back to sage, red rocks to cream and buff clays, and back again. Tomorrow we will leave the mountains behind as we enter the Great Basin landscape of the west. Once over this last mountain, the basin and range will meet us on the way through Nevada and finally home to Klamath Falls where Basin and Range meets the Cascade Range.

A favorite book in my library is “Basin and Range’ by John McPhee. It’s the Sand Creek Almanac of the west, only better. If you ever read it, the wild spaces of Nevada will never bore you.

September 6 Killarney to Toronto

I have only a few photos of this day, and most of them are somewhat gloomy, but I did put them up on Picasa and they are linked here.

After the gorgeous day we enjoyed yesterday, this morning we woke again to gloomy rainy weather. Deciding to skip the morning hikes in the pouring rain, we packed up the MoHo and headed for Toronto. On the way, we happened to stop at a roadside information kiosk where the attendant told us about the Muskoga Lake Region. She also was incredibly helpful and made phone calls for us to the Swift Kayak and Canoe Company where we planned to visit.

On the way, we visited the charming little town of Muskoka Lake, and stopped at an area dominated by huge exposures of the Pre-Cambrian Shield. This is some of the oldest rock in the world, covering a large portion of Ontario and where much of the wealth of the province is derived.

Thanks to her information, we re-routed back north and through the lake district, and went to the main store selling the Swift Adirondack kayaks that I have been admiring on the internet for a time now. These kayaks are sleek and gorgeous, weighing only 34 pounds, with a cockpit that can accommodate Abby, and sealed bulkheads that will keep our gear dry. The owner just happened to be in the store, and offered to ship to the US, saving us the 13 percent provincial tax. It was an exciting day, and our boats will arrive in Oregon when we return after October 1st.

Even though we were traveling the beautiful lake district, with all the forests we didn’t see very much of the lakes and didn’t want to take more time to stop and visit. It is a beautiful area, however, and I would have loved to spend more time. The rest of the day was uneventful, as we navigated into the eastern part of the city of Toronto where we planned to camp at the city owned Glen Rouge Park.

September 5 Sault Ste Marie to Killarney and a bear!

The rest of the photos for this day of travels are linked here

Our day turned out to be wonderfully exciting and beautiful as we crossed the border into Canada. The weather was gloomy at first, but cleared as the day progressed. Originally, our plan for this trip included several days in the provincial parks along the northern shore of Lake Superior where we planned to kayak the lakes and rivers of this part of Ontario. We changed our plans a few days ago, and it turned out to be a good idea. The storms and rain would have kept us from doing any kayaking and the drives were long and featureless with the lake hidden by miles and miles of trees. In addition, the cost of gasoline in Canada ran as high as 4.00 per US gallon, so those many miles would have been expensive.

Instead, our only day camping in Ontario parks was today, at Killarney Provincial Park. Once over the border, which was completely uneventful, we stopped at the Ontario visitors center for information. The guide there was knowledgeable and helpful, and told us in her opinion Killarney was the loveliest park to see.

On the way through the park we stopped for a roadside rest along a lovely lake and hiked around a bit with the dog before continuing. Arriving at the campground around 2 in the afternoon, we set up our camp and thrilled at the brilliant sunshine. The park brochure listed several excellent hikes that were accessible to us, in addition to visiting the small coastal town of Killarney and kayaking either a lake or a river. After perusing the map and the weather we opted for a chance to actually take our boats down and get in the water for the first time on this trip! The skies were gorgeous and the winds were high, but the launching point on Chickanishing Creek was protected enough and had a good ramp. There were several people coming in to land, and the winds were a bit daunting, but we launched and headed for the “Big Water”.

We paddled through meandering water with very little current, among huge pink boulders of granite, smoothed by glaciers and dotted with pine, spruce, and fir. Once we emerged onto Lake Superior, there were granite islands all around us, but the wind was so high we were afraid to go very far into the waves. We don’t have skirts for our kayaks, and big winds make big waves, and we didn’t want to swamp in the extremely cold water so we turned back.

Gichee-Goomi, the Shining Big Sea Water

Paddling upstream was almost effortless, and back in the protected shelter of the creekside banks and cliffs the wind wasn’t as difficult to manage. While gliding along watching the bank, I suddenly realized that something was also watching me! I was eye to eye with a small black bear on the bank, just a few feet from my kayak. Wow! I was glad to be in my boat, even knowing that bears are great swimmers, I felt OK. I called out to Mo, backpaddled to get a better view and take some photos. Abby was sniffing like crazy trying to figure out what that thing was, and the bear was doing the same. We didn’t stay around long enough for him to get more interested in us, but he didn’t seem the least bit afraid of us either. It was the first bear I have seen up that close in ages, not since my mapping days in North Idaho in the 90’s. He was cute. From the safety of my boat, at least.

Our first bear of the trip, up close and personal!

The weather held up long enough for us to reload the boats and get settled into camp before starting to rain again. It was a perfectly wild and gorgeous day with a bear to top it off.

September 4 Gogebic to Sault Ste Marie

The rest of the photos for this day are linked here:

Rain seems to be following us on this trip through the northern part of the country, and according to the weather forecasts, it will follow us into Canada. Today we left Gogebic Lake in the rain and drove across Michigan to Sault Ste Marie, on the Michigan-Canadian border.

Our northern route included a side trip to the Picture Rocks National Lakeshore in the northern part of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. In the small town of Munising, Michigan, we had pasties, touted as the best on the UP. I think that may be true. Muldoon’s Pasties specialty are the traditional beef, potato, rutabaga, and carrot kind, served with a rich beef gravy. Mo liked the apple dessert pasty the best. The definition of a “pasty” is a pie that is made without a pan, basically a kind of hand pie. Yummm.

We left the MoHo in Munising and drove the 11 mile route to the shore through gorgeous hardwood forests. The weather was wild and windy, but Pictured Rocks was still the highlight of the day. We hiked out to the overlooks and along the cliff trails of the one area of the park that is reasonably accessible. I can see how on a pleasant day this would be fabulous coastal kayaking area, but it also wouldn’t have been as dramatic a visit as it was for us in the wild wind.

After our sidetrip, we ambled on through the UP to Sault Ste Marie. The town actually consists of two cities, one on the US side and on in Ontario. The locks here are operated and owned by a cooperative effort between Canada and the US, and were built in the mid 1850’s and one of them is the longest lock in the world. After our tour of the Panama Canal last January, it was interesting to see locks that were built long before the Canal locks. The level of Lake Huron is 21 feet below Lake Superior and the volume of commerce has been immensely important to the economies of this part of the world.

The visitor center here is extremely well done and informative, and there are viewing platforms for watching the ships go through the locks. The rapids of the St Mary’s River have been preserved in a small section adjacent to the locks and are a very popular fishing site. Because of the rain and high winds however, there were very few ships attempting to navigate from Lake Huron to Lake Superior. The next big ship, a 1000 foot long freighter, was scheduled to enter the locks after 9pm. We decided instead to go find an Irish Coffee in a pub, check out the souvenir shops in town across from the visitor center, and go back home to our warm and dry home waiting at the campground.

We opted to stay at the Auld Osborne campground operated by the city of Sault Ste Marie. As we approached our destination, the volume of big fifth wheels and motorhomes was surprising. Once settled in, however, the site was OK, with a view of the river and a somewhat open site. The pedestal for the power was in a pool of water, and the water was in a completely different direction. Not long after we got settled, we saw a parade of people heading for the riverbank, and figured that meant a ship was on its way. Sure enough, a big freighter rolled by, moving amazingly fast. Most of these freighters are hauling taconite, a form of iron ore that has been processed for easy transport. The visitor center had information on the many types of freighters and their history, and in the shops we saw the freighter identification guide book, a worthwhile purchase if your plans include more than a single night.