Too busy to blog

We’ve been unstoppable:  traveling, hiking, wining, and dining every weekend. Judd’s weekends lately start on Thursday night when he finishes up at Prospect High School.  He acquired a long-term substitute job. You can imagine how much those students want to learn with 4 days left in the year.  I think lesson plans this week include making popcorn, bottle rockets, a Disney movie and writing letters to their future selves for Judd to mail back to them in September.

The week I had traveled to Long Beach for work, Judd did a trek on the Rogue River Wilderness trail starting at Grave Creek and doing an overnighter in his hammock. Last weekend, he took me on a stretch from Tucker Flat campground to Paradise Lodge.  The hike was amazing: a pretty flat trail, single wide-but spacious enough not to be scared that you’d fall into the canyon to your death.  Once stretch was called Mule Creek Trail but I would not have wanted to be on mule back for any part of that trail.  The views of the Rogue far below in at the bottom of the canyon were stunning, with massive waterfalls along the way. We passed many hikers coming and going, some hiking lodge to lodge. Paradise Lodge was not very welcoming at 4 in the afternoon.  Signs everywhere said, “For Lodging Guests ONLY.”  We did get free water and broke their, Don’t Use the Rest Room rule.  I guess the staff was awaiting the arrival of a raft load and perhaps the beer and bacon was for them. We had decided to walk to the trailhead because Judd thought it was just 0.1miles from our campground.  Turns out it was more like 1.5 miles to the trailhead AND back again after the “short 3 miles in /3 miles out.” Way to turn a 6 mile hike into a 9 mile hike!   We had cleverly set up our tent and cot before hiking. We were very ready to eat our chicken chili which Judd had pre-prepped. And Jiffy Pop, always Jiffy Pop.  We played cribbage inside the tent as we discovered Oregon can make mosquitos, albeit pretty anemic compared to Maine mosquitos. With all the deluxe camping gear, we still didn’t sleep well, primarily because it got so cold overnight. When we finally braved getting out of our sleeping bags, we strolled to the Rogue Ranch, a little plantation in the middle of no where.  Judd was SO impressed with the old tools/machines in the plantation museum.  (see below) The trip in, was a 20 mile gravel road with no cell service to get there. Roads were named things like BLM-32-9-14 (Bureau of Land Management.) 
We decided for night two, we'd *camp* at a hotel near wineries......We had pigs wandering through the Freed Vineyard... more on that soon.

https://www.blm.gov/or/resources/recreation/rogue/files/rogue-river-trail-guide.pdf