Sunday, February 24, 2008

Twin Lakes

What a wonderful day!!!!! I got up early and went to church to sing in two services with the Women's Choir (had a solo bit). The sermon was excellent (the swing towards fascism that our country is taking thanks to Bush, Cheney, and Haliburton). Hey, it is a Unitarian church, what do you expect. I then hooked up with a guy that I will be doing some singing with in a few weeks with a bunch of other people. I get to do some improve-skat stuff which will be fun: music from the Broadway show Hairspray. Then I took off and picked up my buddy Gar for some fun out in the open air.

One of the Twin Lakes: Photo borrowed from Trailjunky at NWHikers.net

In my last post I mentioned driving around the Central Washington desert and we headed back out towards Harrington today to Twin Lakes. What a damn great walk. I did not take my camera so the picture I have here was borrowed from a trail report on NWHiker.net. The hike is in the Best Desert Hiking Washington that I just got and Gar has been out there several times in the summer.

We got to the road into the wildlife area and decided to just park and walk because of the snow and the mud. Ok, Gar wanted to try it but I would not go for it. We were in my Festiva! After we parked and got down the road a ways he agreed that it would have been bad to drive down it because he would have ended up doing a lot of pushing.

The snow out there is as deep as it was a Fishtrap but someone had driven on the road a few times in a big 4WD so we were able to walk the road in the tracks. It is a little over two miles from the entrance down to the lake. Most of the way is in the sagebrush covered scabby flats and then drops way down to the lake which is surrounded by basalt cliffs. The two lakes are connected by a creek. There are camping spots down there and Gar has spent the night there a couple of times. There are trails all over the place including an almost 10 mile loop trail. It would not have been much fun to hike through the snow because it was so deep and heavy but going on the road was not bad. It rained on us the first hour, but not too hard. This is totally an area that I want to go back to in the spring and Gar told me about a nice area near a creek that would be perfect for a backpack. I slept out in the desert for a week once and it was so cool at night. The stars were more amazing than in the mountains because the horizon all around is clear. I want to do that again.

Walter did not accompany us because he has come down with a little case of coccidiosis. Nasty blighter, that is. It started the evening after our little walk out at Fishtrap and I was sort of worried (ok, that is an understatement) that I took him out too soon after his surgery even though the surgeon said I only had to wait two weeks. The blood in his stool really freaked me out a bit but Nancy diagnosed it correctly at once (as she said, working at an animal shelter in Mexico she has seen "shit piles" of it). He is much better today, but still had to stay home and take it easy.

I will be very glad when the snow is gone and the plants start to sprout and the flowers start to bloom. I spent many years working out in the deserts of Washington, Idaho and Oregon when I was an archaeologist and fell in love with the landscape. The book I bought has tons of hikes in it that I have never known of, and info on areas I know but never knew how to access. I want to do some more while the snow melts in the mountains. After all, I still can't find my snow shoes.

Friday, February 22, 2008

Looking for a Snow Free Path


Walter in the rear view mirror

Yesterday was Morgan's 4th Deathday. It just seems so weird. I had the day off which was probably a good thing. I hung around the house with Nancy and Seth for a while, but Seth had to go to work and Nancy did not want to go anywhere. I had to get out.

We have had a tremendous amount of snow this year. I decided to take Walter out to the sagebrush where we would not have deep snow and go for a nice long walk. Well, there was a LOT more snow out in the scablands than I expected. We went out to our favorite old Fishtrap Lake area. Instead of parking on the Fishtrap road we parked at the Miller Ranch. There are gates that you have to open and go through to get to the trails and there was so much snow that I could not get the gate open. So we headed down the closed road to get to another area where we could access the interior of the BLM land.

The road we walked down

There was still 2-3 feet of snow in places with a lot of drifts, yet some areas were bare. We walked nearly a mile down the road and the other gate was chained shut. I debated on climbing it until I stuck my pole through to test the snow depth. It was pretty deep. I don't know why I thought it would be better on the other side of the fence! The walk on the road was pretty exhausting. I would take a step and just sink down an inch or less, then take another and sink down a foot. It was also sunny and warm and melty which made it even harder to walk in. Even so, we had a nice walk and a good time.

After we got back in the car I decided to carry on down the road towards the little hamlet of Sprague. It is not very far at all from Fishtrap Lake. We drove around lovely Sprague and headed back to I-90. Then I saw a sign for Harrington. Well, I have never been to Harrington so I decided right then and there I had to go. It is about 25 miles from Sprague. We drove through a Palouse/Channel Scabland transition zone. Lots of rolling wheat fields punctuated by rocky basalt coulees. Pretty cool.

The little town of Harrington is pretty nice. I saw a couple of cool old houses and the "downtown" area has lots of brick buildings. I once read that all of the brick used in this general area came from a brickwork near Springdale (another cute little hamlet to the north). Having gotten our fill of Harrington, we continued on north to Davenport. It is a nice drive. I almost turned left and went to Odessa but I needed to get home before it was too late in the day. I have only driven through Davenport on Highway 2 and never experienced the seedy underbelly. It's not too seedy. Looks a lot like Harrington without as much brick. Then of course we headed back to Spokane on Highway 2 through Reardan. The road was nice and clear but still a lot of snow out in the fields. When I go through these little towns I always want to stop at the local diner for biscuits and gravy. But I had a cheese sandwich out by Fishtrap so I was set.

Walter is having some intestinal strife now which really concerns me given the huge surgery he just had. I collected a sample and will have it tested tomorrow. Hopefully it is just some bugs or something. He kept waking me up all night needing to go out. I am now worried of course that we over did it yesterday even though it was only a 2 mile walk on a flat road.

I just bought a new hiking guide with my first paycheck. I know, I should not have splurged but I had to (I also got my hair cut which I really had to do too). It is the best 50 desert hikes of Eastern Washington, or something like that. There are lots of places in it that I never knew about that I am looking forward to checking out this spring...when the snow is not too deep to walk!

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