Priest Lake: Osprey Campground

I have been a bit slow with some postings. Last week (June 4, 5, & 6) Walter and I went up to Priest Lake and stayed in the Osprey Campground. I had never been at that one before and have not spent much time on the south side of the lake which is pretty developed. The cool thing is that the campground only had a few people in it and we stayed in the upper level. We were the only ones up there.

I would not say that this was one of my favorite and most enjoyable outings. The weather has been horrible, with rain pretty much every day. I mean, it is June and I was wearing long underwear, several top layers, and a stocking cap in the middle of the day. And then there were the mosquitoes. Ugh!!!! I have never had a mosquito problem like that in this part of the country. They were in my eyes, ears, and nose. I looked down at Walter at one point and they were all over his back. I sprayed and sprayed and sprayed and they just would not go away. And I mean, how much time can a person spend in a tent? You gotta come out sometime to pee and eat!! Oh, and yeah, MAJOR bites on the butt from having to answer the call of nature.

We did have some nice walks (where I was swatting them away from my ears). We drove up to Beaver Creek to check out the flood damage. A road is out and the trail to the beach is now a canyon. Oh, and there is no beach. We walked a bit on the shoreline trail. LOTS of water on the trail. And lots of elk poo all over the place. Way more than I have ever noticed up there. The campground was closed because of flood damage. There was a hell of a lot of water that melted pretty darn quick. And scads of it just pooled up (hence the mosquitoes). We walked down the thoroughfare trail to the little river that connects the lakes and there was a real honest to gosh current. We took a little stroll on the Hanna Flats Trail which winds through a stand of pretty old trees. That was ok except it was raining on us.

Of course I took some pictures but the only one to actually turn up on my memory card was the sign for Hanna Flats and that was blurry. I did take a nice picture of elk poo in the middle of the creek as a reminder of why one should always filter drinking and cooking water. One time I found a dead moose in the water I had been filtering. Yuck.

I am waiting for the snow to get out of the mountains. It snowed on Mt. Spokane the other day and the trails still have lots of snow on them in spots. Walter and I are going to work on finishing up the 50 x 50 trails around Sherman Pass this summer. As of now though, there is still too much snow and runoff.

This weekend I did a lot of work around the house. My bedroom is now "Lemon Ice" instead of Great White Hunter Brown. What ever possessed me to paint the trim and crown moulding black???? My next weekend off (which is in the middle of the week) will involve a camping trip, but I am just not sure where. Nancy and I were going to take off together for a couple of days but she has a friend coming to visit from Mexico. At this point I am just not sure if it will be a trip with just Walter.