The Lake Adventure and the Fires

 I had a grand old time at the lake yesterday.   I got up, did all the cat chores, loaded the kayak and took off.  Good for me!

I was there all day!

The lake was very very rough.  Wind whipped the main lake into whitecaps.  The wind whipped waves were augmented by large numbers of boat wakes.   So.....wild and wooly for a flat little sit on top kayak.  Just the way I like it.  By late afternoon, the water was much quieter.

However, at one point, I got out to swim, and tied up the kayak, using a knot in the rope and wedging the knot down a crack in a big rock.   I was out quite a distance from the kayak when I saw it was getting nearly swamped over and over by boat wake waves.

I swam to it as fast as I could but realized, once there, my paddle was gone, washed out by the massive boat wakes.  I got on the kayak and started trying to look for the paddle (they float) by paddling it with my hands.  No luck.

I yelled at a passing motor boat, to keep an eye out for a black Kayak paddle floating in the water.   Instead, the boat came over near me, and they offered me a white plastic paddle they had on board for emergencies.  I thanked them for this kindness.  I was clear over near the 2nd bridge and a very very long way from my car and where I put in with my boat, at least by water.  I would probably have had to swim most of that way back and pull the kayak.

I asked how I could return the paddle to them.  The man said oh just keep it, but then said they were camped at Sunnyside, loop C.  They had drifted away from me by then and I couldn't hear them very well over the sound of their motor and other boat motors.  I never heard what campsite they had.

I used the paddle to move the kayak like you would a canoe then, and went looking for my kayak paddle.  I found it fairly fast, against floating driftwood, down in a corner of the lake, only 200 feet or so from where I'd tied up my kayak for swimming.

I thought maybe I could catch the boat operated by the paddle loaners and return the paddle.  Yeah right.  In what universe.  

But sometimes the boaters headed under the 2nd bridge, towards Sunnyside campground boat ramp and moorage docks, just go slightly beyond the bridge and anchor out.   The paddle loaner boat was not there.  I paddled on to the Sunnyside boat ramp.  Not there either.  I then headed upriver to the moorage docks, not at either of those.  Ah shoot, I thought, I tried.

After I finally got out, and I really didn't want to get out, but it was almost 5:00 p.m. and I had begun to imagine the rampage's of my cats, I loaded the kayak and then headed to Sunnyside to see if I could spot the couple who loaned me the paddle.  I drove through C Loop of the campground, with the paddle sticking out the window and above the car.  I had no luck finding them and finally gave the paddle to the booth ranger, after telling her the story, hopeful somehow it would still make it back to them.

Oregon is on fire again.  Today, the smoke was thick to the east and southeast.   Also to the west and southwest.  Mary's Peak, in the coast range, west of the valley, was almost obscured in smoke.

There is a fire northeast of the lake I love now, and started in the mountains just 8 miles south of Detroit, the town that burned last fall, to the ground in the wildfires.   It's in steep terrain in our county and was likely a careless camper's fire that started it, but that's not known for sure yet.  Just through comments online, after posts about the fire, lead me to believe the worst, that people were up there camping and lots of them had illegal campfires going.  There are two or three fires in central Oregon, one two miles north and east of Sisters.  Then there's the massive one, the Bootleg fire, down in Klamath and Lake counties and the fire that has closed the highway to Crater Lake, down east of Roseburg.   To name some of the Oregon fires.

Some of them are getting under control I hear, which is good, but not the Bootleg fire.

I didn't bat an eye over the billionaire trip to space.   When these boy billionaires have nothing better to do with their massive fortunes than take joy rides in low space, they may have a bit too much money on their hands.   Gosh.   Jeff Bezos ex wife, meanwhile, is giving her share of their fortune away all over the country to nonprofits helping people out.  They seem different as night and day.