Where’s Nico?

Okay – sure, ‘Burning Down the House’ was one of the Talking Heads’ bigger hits, but I don’t know that I was super excited to use it for a post title, because… well, because it probably meant something got a bit weird on our trip.

I’ll start off by saying everyone is fine here! But as far as the burning… well first, let’s get to the question, where’s Nico?

Boise National Forest!

When we went through Idaho to come out to Oregon a few months back, we drove through Boise National Forest, and it looked like the kind of place we wanted to check out a little better. Now’s our chance!

Before I get into BNF, how did we get here?

Last you and I spoke, we were still up in the beautiful Mount Hood National Forest. Well, after a great two week stay there, we decided to head down to Rogue River National Forest. But before we headed out, we had to hit the exciting town known as Boring, Oregon!

Why would we opt for Boring? Well, we had already gone to the neighboring town of Sandy to do our laundry and grocery run, and Boring is the home of:

Were we truly gullible enough to throw $8 a piece at these guys to get admission to such an esteemed and august institution? Honestly… what do you think?

Sure – it was tripe. But we got more than $8 worth of entertainment laughing about it.

Anyway, the next day, we headed on down towards Rogue River.

Our drive down was interesting – after taking Oregon Highway 97 just past a town called Beaver Marsh, we turned onto Oregon Highway 138. As we did, I looked at my GPS, which said to go 18 miles and turn left. As I looked up, I saw a temporary LED sign on the side of the road that said “Forest Fire – Highway Closed in 19 miles”. I thought it was probably a good sign that the GPS wanted us to turn before then, albeit a bit closer than I would have probably chose myself.

Things seemed pretty smokey as we were driving down. But the reality is we were fine. We did see some of the efforts to contain the fire, including helicopters, as we routed ourselves, but the sky was much clearer when we got close to our campsite.

We camped at the Natural Bridge Campground in Rogue River National Forest. It was a beautiful place, and we were just fifteen feet off the river at the back side of our site, with a trail cut to let us down to the banks. The Rogue River is really cool, but I will say – it’s definitely dangerous. We quickly opted not to do a ‘river day’ alongside it, where we splashed around in the waters. But there were trails along it that were really great. As you may guess, I have a few pics!

Two of the main features near our campsite were the ‘Natural Bridge’ and the Rogue River Gorge. The natural bridge was a bit different than we expected. As Kristen and I have travelled the country, we’ve encountered several ‘natural bridges’. They are typically natural stone arcs that you can see or even walk under. Honestly, it’s a bit of a joke for Kristen and I – we visited Natural Bridge State Park in Virginia back in 2020 and couldn’t get over what a letdown it really was for all the billboards and signs they had for miles beforehand hyping the place up. Since then, we’ve encountered other places labeled ‘Natural Bridge’, and laughed because of that experience.

This Natural Bridge was quite a bit different. Instead of a stone arc representing the natural bridge, this was a two hundred foot stretch where the Rogue River literally disappears – it flows down into lava tubes under the ground, which they label as a natural bridge. It’s pretty impressive, and the water is wild!

As far as the Rogue River Gorge, it was pretty spectacular too. We enjoyed a nice hike to the north from our campground to check the gorge out and we were not disappointed!

One of the main reason people camp in this area though is not the Rogue River – it’s Crater Lake National Park. We had initially wanted to visit Crater Lake as we were coming to Oregon, as it’s the only National Park in the state and we had never been there, but we cooled to the idea after seeing that 1) much of the area was still snow packed when we got to Oregon in early June, and 2) dogs are not allowed on any non-paved trails in the park.

A few friends, Steve and Norma, really suggested that we make a trip up to Crater Lake all the same. I’m very glad they did! For those who don’t know this already, Crater Lake is this incredible lake inside the caldron of a volcano that erupted 8,000 years ago. It’s the deepest lake in North America, going almost 2000 feet down, and unbelievably clear. We took Nico up to the rim, where there is an area that we could hike with him.

We went back a few days later, leaving Nico in the trailer (which we seldom do and are very hesitant about) so that we could hike down from the rim to the water’s edge and take a dip. We feel bad about leaving him back at the trailer, but it’s almost like young parents getting a date night in.

The water was beautiful, but temperature-wise – it’s what those of us who grew up in Iowa winters would charitably call ‘brisk’.

The lake itself it created solely from rain and snow – the area gets about forty feet of snow a year, and the roads to the park are really just open for a handful of months a year unless you’re travelling by snowmobile.

When we did the day trip to Crater Lake without Nico, we did notice that the forest fires had expanded quite a bit from just a few days earlier. Here’s a pic from our first drive up with Nico, where you could see some smoke:

Here’s a few pics from the north rim of Crater Lake three days later of that same mountain – you’ll see one main plume, but three other areas with separate fires going:

Hence the whole “Burning Down the House” title for this post. We definitely saw the smoke around us at our campsite and while we were on the road. It did make for some nice sunsets though:

In addition to our exploits around Rogue River and Crater Lake, we did a side trip over to ‘the Illy’, or the Illinois River, for our river day. I have no earthly idea why there is an Illinois River in Oregon – maybe it was something that foreshadowed the University of Oregon joining the Big 10 decades later (and from the time when the Big 10 actually was made up of ten teams).

It was about two hours from our campground, and was totally worth the trip. In fact, it was so worth it that we did it twice. The fact that the temps got to the upper 90’s in the area made the river days even more appealing. The site we hit was idyllic – we had it to ourselves on both visits, the water was a little cool but much warmer than other rivers we’ve been in, and the half mile hike from the road down to the river took us by bunches of ripe, juicy blackberries, which we picked and enjoyed for dessert. Nico even left his ‘Barbie Pillow’ to take a couple of swims in the water – although we kind of forced his hand in that area.

We really enjoyed our week in the Rogue River area. After that, as I mentioned, we headed over to Boise National Forest. We just arrived here earlier today, and are excited to check out the area, which includes a bunch of natural hot springs. But I’m sure I’ll have more to share on that in the next post!

– Ken 8/5/24