Chickahominy!, 2021

Well, it appears we hadn’t been to Chickahominy for a fishing visit since 2018. Thankfully this site serves as my collective memory on such things. We have stopped in for a night on our way to somewhere else, and enjoyed a close up visit by a great horned owl on one memorable night. This time around it just seemed like we needed to get out to do some spring fishing, and take the boat for one last ride before we parted ways. A sunny weekend and the waters of Chickahominy beckoned. We arrived right before sunset.

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Macks Canyon, 2021

We continued searching for signs of spring. If you don’t recall, it was blackbirds on the John Day River that kicked off our spring search, followed by a trip to the coast that revealed daffodils in bloom, and then a weekend in the Columbia River Gorge for some spring wildflowers. Spring is all around, you just have to get out and find some signs. This time around we were bound for the lower Deschutes river. What signs of spring would we find?

Hills taking on a shade of green, a sure sign of spring on the Deschutes
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Columbia River Gorge, 2021

In our continued spring tour of Oregon our next stop after Sunset Bay was the Columbia River Gorge. The wildflowers are usually out early and reliably in the Gorge and this year did not disappoint. For this trip we stayed on the eastern end of the Gorge and camped out of Memaloose State Park. It served as a good base when higher elevation camps further out were still mostly under snow. From there, we were up Saturday morning and off to find a trail to hike. Our first planned stop had an already overflowing parking lot at 9 a.m. Further up the road we found space at the Lyle Cherry Orchard Trail and started up the hill. I still don’t know where the cherry orchard was, but we were successful in our search for flowers.

Western Waterleaf
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