Lake Owyhee State Park, Oregon

After a 22 mile drive on a very curvy, narrow, but very picturesque road we arrived at Lake Owyhee. We got settled in our site in Indian Creek campground in time for lunch, which we enjoyed while gazing at the lake. We  had the last site on the end of the row, above the other sites, with a nice patch of grass, and all the water and electric we could use. What more could you ask for! The sites in this campground are bigger than those in the McCormack campground. The camp host sells ice, and there's fuel available, but no other services. The park brochure lists a store, but we never saw one! We spent the day relaxing and admiring the changing shadows on the cliffs as the sun moved across the valley, then got up early the next day (Thursday) and headed for the visitor's center.

The signage isn't especially good, but you park in front of the sign that says "official vehicles only" and walk back to a collection of small office buildings. The visitor's center wasn't open - more budget cuts - but the Dam Master who was on duty in the office let us in and provided a wealth of information about the construction and operation of the dam. Having recently visited Boulder dam, we had some background, and he pointed out that this dam was built first, so many of the construction techniques developed here, such as the concrete delivery system, were used on the Boulder project. This was, for a while, the highest dam in the country, but lost that honor when Boulder was built. The visitors center has a nice collection of photos of the construction, as well as some Native American artifacts. They didn't have any information on the geology of the area, which was a little disappointing as this is clearly an area where dramatic geologic activities have had an impact. (And I left my Oregon Roadside Geology book at home!!)

It was HOT, and getting hotter, so once it got too hot to set outside we decided to take advantage of our air conditioning and holed up inside. I good time to read and work on some sewing projects.

Friday was predicted to be even hotter, so we decided to take an early walk up Fisherman's Road. This is the road that goes east, over the mountains to Succor Creek. The road hasn't receive much maintenance and according to the rangers is really too rough to traverse with anything other than an ORV, so we'll be going around to the other side and take a different route into Succor Creek. Indian Creek crosses the road a couple of times at the bottom and the birds and butterflies congregate there.... what a collection! There were more species of butterflies here than I've seen for a long time.... probably attracted by the very lush thistles. The afternoon was spent sorting maps and working again on my sewing projects. We hit a high of 104 - which inspired me to invent a new recipe. It was too hot to  bake, so I made banana bread in the slow cooker. It was still 104 after dinner, at 7 o'clock, so we went down to the lake for a dip which helped. It had dropped to a more tolerable mid 90's by the time we got back to the trailer.

Tomorrow we'll move over the border into Idaho so we have easier access to the Succor Creek area we want to explore.