Summer is here

Thursday:
Summer officially began on the 20th; the summer solstice. Practically speaking, it began the day local schools were out.
This morning, three pickups pulled into the campground. From the looks of their huge tents, and all the other stuff they had,  they are the advanced team for an even larger group.
We headed on this morning knowing that if we were to get a good spot for the weekend, we needed to arrive on Thursday. We drove through the Quinn River and Rock Creek USFS campgrounds but were not especially impressed. Our problem is that we have become terribly spoiled. If a campground doesn't get an 8 on our scale, we continue on.
There are a limitless number of disbursed camping opportunities in the area. I tried two dirt roads that clearly lead down to the river but they just kept getting narrower and more deeply rutted so I found a turn-around.
Here is our next RV:

Our next RV

No need to turn back with this one.

We went to the dump/water fill near the Gull Point campground. This was out motivation for leaving Little Cultus Lake; we were about out of water.  Then we went to the North Twin Lake USFS campground.  We had driven through here before and were very impressed.  It's a small campground with a decent level of privacy between sites. All three of the direct waterfront sites were taken but we got a nice, fairly level, pull-through site with a limited water view.  Two of the three waterfront sites had tags indicating they were leaving in the morning.  We need to go into Bend to resupply before we head out of this area so we decided to stay here, take a site and see what happened with the other sites in the morning.

The day use area is very popular on these warm, sunny days. It has a nice, large sandy beach. A women I was talking to said the crowd of kids are from nearby La Pine. I was sitting outside just watching the world go by when this pickup truck pulled in and disgorged nine kids, four dogs and a pile of inflated water toys. :-)

Friday:

I was up early watching the two sites we hoped to get. Sure enough, about 8am the motorhome in Site #9, the best site in the campground, packed up and left. Thirty seconds later, we were in the site. (43.731448  -121.765030) We have an unobstructed view of the lake. It's a small lake, probably not much more then a 1/2 mile diameter. Gopher and I set out to walk around the lake but the weather started looking nasty so we turned back. We did see an eagle fly off it's nest.  Before we leave, we'll finish the walk.

The lake does not allow power boats; another plus from our point of view. Todays forecast calls for mostly rain. In fact, the forecast for the next several days is for cloudy and cool with a good chance of rain. The last few days were just weather perfect. We've got no complaint coming.

 Our site #9

 Our view

An osprey fishing

The rain pretty much lasted all day. For us it wasn't all that bad but not much fun for the tenters.  A group of scouts pulled in this afternoon and had to do all their setup during a pretty heavy rain.

About 7pm the rain stopped. Within a half hour, there were six guys fishing on the lake. I think they were stir crazy from being cooped up all day.

Saturday:

 

The weather improved some. The rain is mostly an occasional drizzle and now and then, the sun comes out.  Right now it's 1pm and 50* which I suspect will be todays high temp. Gopher and I walked around the lake in the morning. On the far side of the lake, there is a clearing that can be accessed by a Forest Service road. When we're here in the Siberian Tiger :-), that's where we will camp.

From the other side of the lake.

Sunday:

The rain has changed into a heavy mist. By 8am most of the campers were packing up; enough's enough. We were going to stay here another day but decided to head into Bend to run errands before going back into the mountains. We stopped at Wal-Mart, Fred Myers where I got gas for $3.59/gallon, we both got haircuts ($12 each for us old people), did a load of laundry and got Chinese take-out from Safeway, all by about 3pm. Bend has most everything we need but it's a madhouse of traffic.
After errands, we went to Sisters. Sisters is your basic summer tourist trap. Nice enough, but we walked the streets once a number of years ago. That's enough. There is a city RV campground where for only $5, we dumped the tanks and filled up with water.  The RV campground is basically a patch of grass with hookups. Nothing of interest to us.  We have groceries, gas, water and empty tanks. Plus with our new haircuts and clean cloths we both look decent. Life is Good.
We continued west on US 20 to the Deschutes NF about three miles west of Sisters. There are a number of FS roads running off 20. We picked a likely looking one and found a nice boondocking spot for tonight. Near here: 44.31540  -121.57582

Tonights campsite

In the morning we head to the Quartzville Recreation Corridor and Back County Byway.

Quartzville Rec. Area