Free Fishing Day!

June 4 was Free Fishing Day in Oregon.  That means anyone can fish without a license. Last year we purchased a license for about $79 each and only fished half the year.) We felt quite smug this year that we were avoiding all the fees this year. A colleague at work suggested we should go to Fish Lake (Duh?!) and at the 11th hour we reserved a cabin.  We were told it included bedding, hot showers, a stove and microwave.  That's even easier camping than last weekend. Judd packed up a plastic tub of fishing gear and I packed the ice chest and off we went. I managed to forget the leftovers to warm up for dinner so it was fortuitous that Fish Lake comes with a Tadpole Cafe. Judd forgot a koozi for his beer.  We need more practice at this spontaneous road trip thing.....

Fish Lake was only an hour from Jacksonville and we arrived ready for tea time on their porch. It was warm in the sun with a view of all the people, mostly little people, heading down to the lake with their poles on their shoulders, just like Opie Taylor. Some folks were renting boats, some were fishing from the shore or dock.

We decided to hike a bit before fishing so went up to the Pacific Crest Trail trailhead and did an
hour southbound over the Mt. Brown lava beds. Mt. McCloughlin was still bedazzled with snow to the north. We could see more snow on the east side of the peak than we see from the Rogue Valley below. It was one of the weirdest, diverse geological walks we'd done.  Judd was just remarking that the trail through the pine forest on the soft needles almost seemed Maine-esque and then we emerged from the forest over yards of grey lava boulders.  What made that part of the walk comfortable is that someone took the time to cart in smaller gravel size lava to make if level and walkable trail.  Judd had read 

 that this is the most expensive part of the PCT for that reason. (And he thought the AT in Pennsylvania was rocky!)
  We traversed a pretty full, rapid creek (via well maintained bridge) on the way off the trail.  Neither of us could figure out the bizarre plants we'd been passing all through the forest. They were all speckled, no matter what variety. It finally dawned on us that all the plants were heavily-ladened with pollen.

Apres le hike, cold, refreshing beverages awaited us in our new silicon wine glasses (copied from our kids.) We went back to the cabin and played some cribbage out side our little waterfront cabin until we were hungry enough to dine on the porch again. I took the bleu cheese crumbles from my super salad back to the cabin so Judd could microwave up some of his famous French nachos, but we never got to them.  Judd read aloud from the cabin's newspaper. It was like a county specific National Inquirer from 1960 with all the local gossip and all the believe-it-or -not "history" from the region. I couldn't believe it, a lot of it.

We took a short after-dinner walk around the lake.  Here, they even re-purpose lava boulders in their drive way lining or fire pitting. Sunset was nicely reflected when the lake stilled. We realized we had never wet a fishing line.  We were okay with that. Why let a fish spoil a good day?