nature | Bioblogging with Rich

In going back over the previous post, I realized I never showed you our campsite. That’s because I didn’t take any pictures of it! But S did and here’s what it looked like.

J and I setting up our tent

The 1 person tent S used

our tent is set up!

Hanging out around the cooking and general central area of our site

If you look closely, you can see me just sitting around in a folding chair. Not what I usually take on a “backpack” but as the Lake of the Woods camp site was only a kilometre from the drop off point, I figured I could endure carrying the chair for 20 minutes! So glad I did! Gave S my normal thermarest backpack chair and J brought her favourite backpack chair so we were pretty comfy.

Oh, and I forgot to tell you about another interesting development that we discovered when we started to cook dinner the first night. We brought my snowpeak propane backpack stove and my backpack popcan stove that uses methanol (methyl hydrate is what you purchase it as). Before we left home, I had assiduously filled up my gas transport bottle with methanol. At least that’s what I thought I did. So I filled up the popcan stove and tried to light it. It wasn’t lighting. It never not lights! I sniffed the container and realized I hadn’t looked at the label of the stock I had used to refill it. It was paint thinner, not methanol, and wouldn’t light! So that meant we had only 1 small stove for the 3 of us to make all our meals and couldn’t use a fire as there was a fire ban throughout BC because of all the wildfires! DOH! Well, we almost made it through but our last meal the propane tank ran out. Note to self; be more careful next time!

Day 2

Ok, it’s day 2 and we are deciding where to go. As yesterday’s hike kind of wore us out a bit, we decided to take it easy. J and S decided they just wanted to go back to Ladyslipper lake and hang out there, maybe go swimming. I decided I really wanted to see Goat Lake so after a short way to Goat Lake, they headed back to the trail juncture and went back to Ladyslipper.

Good choice for me on my part. I hadn’t been hiking alone in quite a while and it turned out to be just what I needed! Here’s my trip to Goat lake, which failed to live up to its name as I didn’t see any goats there but filled my needs in all other aspects.

From our juncture, the trail descends into the valley that leads up to a basin where Goat lake is. Once in the valley, it’s a nice gentle trail to the lake. Easy walking 🙂

From the map I knew that the lake would be surrounded by a bunch of peaks and nestled into a basin. Every now and then, I would get a glimpse of where I was ultimately headed.

Beetle's legacy-1 — First views of some of the peaks around Goat Lake

And you can now begin to see some of the devastation caused by the bark beetle. Most of the large spruce etc are dead. Fortunately, there are young trees springing up to replace them so in another 30 years or so, if they survive, it won’t look quite so desolate. You can also see the continuing effects the smoke was having on the views. Normally would have been clear blue sky with high definition on the mountains given the lens I was using.

stream meadow pano-1 — the stream winding through the valley that issues out of Goat Lake.

tenacity-1 — I called this image “tenacity”. It will take a good long while for the new ones to attain such a majestic state but I’m hoping they’re tenacious.

Rebirth-1 — and this one “rebirth” because you can see all the new trees coming up to replace the dead ones.

Here’s a lovely boggy meadow filled with a sedge called narrow-leaved cotton grass and then a closeup of the actual cotton grass plant.

Rebirth-2 — More peaks coming into view and a lovely bunch of cotton grass

cotton grass-1 — cotton grass up close and personal.

Getting a bit closer to the lake now.

mountain meadow pano-1 — More of the mountain you saw in the previous picture with all the cotton grass

full mountain pano-1 — A panorama preview of what’s coming up around the lake!

And, tada! Finally made it to the lake.

It was a warm lovely day except for the smoke so I walked around to the other end of the lake and found a great spot from which to view both the surrounding mountains and the lake while I ate my lunch and drank my tea. Nice breeze to keep the bugs away, too. Happy camper I am.

goat basin pano-1 — Looking South from my lunch spot

Mountain Basin pano-1 — More views South. This is called Denture ridge.

Goat lake pano-1 — Looking North across the lake

Goat lake pano-2 — The boggy area between the lake and the mountains surrounding it. I was eating lunch perched on a big rock in the trees on the right hand side of the image.

So…. Goat lake is just a nice little lake. Nothing special about it except for where it is and the peaks that surround it. There were 2 other young folks there and they left before I did so I had the place all to myself for quite a nice bit of time.

mountain and trees pano-1 — The mountain furthest South and East along the lake’s border.

I just love the rock that these mountains are composed of. It’s quite dramatic looking and it looks like it would be really fun to scramble up and climb if you were so inclined. Of course, much steeper than it looks in the photos!

After relaxing and taking a few more pictures, it’s time to head back. A parting shot of the lake on my way back out.

Took a few more photos of flowers and such.

early death-1 — A dead young spruce. Not just the old ones are killed.

fall lupine leaves-1 — Alpine Lupine leaves in their yellow fall coloration

flower-1 — One of the Sparganium spp, probably emersum or angustifolium.

white brown lichen-1 — A lichen I’d never seen before! Really cool colours. Couldn’t find it looking in Plants of Coastal British Columbia is but checked with a lichen expert and he suggested might be Solorina crocea, chocolate chip lichen.

bryoria lichen macro-1 — Another common lichen often found on dead larch and which we saw a lot of, is called tree hair lichen or black tree lichen. Bryoria fremontii

Made it back to camp and joined up with J and S. Sponged off my sweat in Lake of the Woods, ate dinner and relaxed. Watched stars, fell asleep.

Day 3

We had originally planned to leave on the 3:30 shuttle down so after a lazy breakfast we packed up camp and figured we could just leave our gear at the lodge and go for a day hike, returning just a bit before heading out.

Nope. As I mentioned in the previous post, due to the smoke coming into the park, BC Parks declared an evacuation of Cathedral Lakes Park. So we pared down our hike to a short jaunt over to Scout Lake which was just a km or so from the lodge and hoped we could get out on the 1 pm shuttle. No sense hanging around for more smoke!

Turned out to be a good plan. Wandered over to Scout lake and enjoyed ourselves and saw another of the lakes. Here’s a few pics.

Scout lake pano-2 — Our original day plan was to hike up that far ridge but due to the evac, just went to the lake.

Scout lake pano-1 — Another view of the surrounding mountains from the other side of the lake.

I walked all the way around while J and S just stayed on one side. Here’s a nice sedge that I saw at the lake.

sedge macro-3 — Carex stylosa? Variegated or Long-styled sedge is my current best guess and if so is a rare plant.

And a nice batch of Arnica next to a rock.

yellow flowers and rock-1 — I think this is Arnica montana or Arnica mollis

On the way out I went a little way past the lake to see the creek coming out of it and got a really nice shot.

It’s very peaceful looking, don’t you think?

Back to the lodge and it turns out that they decided to try to evacuate everyone on the 1pm shuttle. So they had 3 or 4 trucks going back down to the highway. Uneventful ride, back to the car and then back home.

So that’s our trip to Cathedral Lakes Provincial Park. Maybe we’ll go back when there isn’t any smoke and see all the wonderful views we were supposed to see originally. But there are just so many wonderful places to visit, that maybe we won’t. Only time will tell.

Hope you enjoyed seeing a bit of this wonderful park. We sure did!

Until next time, keep on rambling.

Rich

Day 3

We spent a wonderful morning with our friends in Roseburg – actually in the countryside between Sutherlin and Roseburg – and they gave us a whole host of suggestions of things to see and do as we travelled down to the redwoods in California and when we headed back home via another section of the Oregon coast.

We made our way back to I5 where we headed on down to Grant’s Pass. We wanted to take a coffee break so we got off the highway and just started heading through town. As soon as we drove by the Bluestone Cafe, I knew we had found our coffee stop!

Coast D3-1 — The Bluestone Cafe in Grant’s Pass

As the food looked really good, too, we ordered a couple of sandwiches to take on the road with us. Good decision so we thought until we opened the bags a bit later. Much to our surprise, although the receipt indicated we got what we ordered and paid for, what was inside was a completely different order! And as I’m a pescavore and both sandwiches had meat, I pretty much had to make do with a bit of bread and some granola bars for lunch. Even so, everyone makes mistakes and I’d still give top ratings for this place!! The bevvies were perfect 🙂

From Grant’s Pass, we picked up Highway 199, which is also called the Redwood Highway. One of the places our friends had recommended we stop at was Jedidiah Smith Redwoods State Park. So we did. It comes up about 45 minutes or so after you cross into California. We spent about an hour there just walking a little loop and having our first experience amongst the big trees. Here’s some big tree photos from the park.

Yup, they’re big!

Really big!!

Like, really BIG!!!

There were also scads of white trilliums in bloom on the forest floor and I’m still striving for a perfect spring trillium shot. I take a bunch every year. Here’s a few of this year’s contenders from the park. Coast D3-7 Coast D3-6 Coast D3-5

There was also a lovely bright red mushroom which cried out to be photographed.

Coast D3-8 — Maybe *Hygrophorus* *coccineus* also known as Scarlet Waxy Cap.

And here’s one of the giants just hanging out in the forest. No trail to it. I just enjoyed seeing it so nicely ensconced in all the other foliage and shrubbery. Coast D3-9

So, back into the car and on down the highway. We stopped at a pull off somewhere’s down the road from Crescent City for a bit of a beach break. Coast D3-10 Coast pano D3-12

From here, we headed down to our ultimate destination, the Humboldt Redwoods State Park and the Avenue of the Giants in Phillipsville, where we had booked what we thought was a nice AirBnB cottage. Hoo boy were we surprised when it turned out to be a pretty down and out motel. It’s amazing how good you can make something look if you take pictures of it from a certain angle in just the right light.

By the time we rolled in around 8 PM or so, it was too late to do anything about it so we made the best of it. We headed to the Riverwood Inn, a restaurant/bar across the street from the motel and had a pretty good Mexican dinner so it was not a complete disaster.

Then we rolled into bed and made plans for spending the next day gawking at the big trees.

Well, I think that’s enough for now. I’ll finish this trip report with the next installment.

Happy Ramblings,