We both took half days on Friday and made it to Juniper lake just before dark on Friday night. The lake was beautiful, although the mosquitos were absolutely brutal. The campground was a little more crowded than we had anticipated (I think I counted 6 others), but because the campground lacked running water, we had hoped we would be more alone. We still managed to find a secluded spot and set up camp for the night. It wasn't until we arrived at the campsite that we realized that we forgot to pack the sleeping bags (When I say "we" I really mean Chris. He was in charge of packing the camping gear). Thankfully, we did have two blankets in the truck and a couple of towels. We decided to sleep in the back of the truck (it has a camper shell) instead of a tent, figuring it would be warmer. But still not warm enough for me. I slept with the blankets as well as two towels and several layers of clothing, including two pairs of hiking socks on my feet. I was still cold. Needless to say I didn't sleep well.
We had planned to stay at Juniper Lake the whole weekend, but decided that we should buy at least one sleeping bag in the nearest town and probably find a less mosquito populated camping spot for the next night if possible. So that's what we did. We ended up at Warner Valley, which was similarly located in a secluded area of the park, although it did have running water. It was located next to a beautiful little creek and a large meadow with lots of deer. We spent Saturday afternoon reading the latest Harry Potter book and took a walk down to the meadow at dusk so Chris could take some pictures.
We had, in my opinion, one of our best campfire dinners of all time. Chris' campfire chili was particularly outstanding, partly because, for once, we had all of the ingredients he needed (it seems we always forget at least one...), we baked potatoes in the coals of the fire, and grilled corn on the cob as well. For dessert were the obligatory roasted marshmellows and s'mores (yummy chocolatey gooey-ness) as well as a couple of bottles of pyramid's hefeweizen (complete with slices of lemon).
Sunday morning we hiked back to "Devil's Kitchen" a hydrothermally active area that is full of geothermal pools and mud pots. It was a nice hike, about 5 miles round trip from our campsite, the perfect length as we needed to be on the road around noon to make it home before it got too late. We hiked through a beautiful meadow along Hot Springs Creek before working our way up into the mountains a bit. Once we arrived at our destination, which smelled of rotten eggs from all the sulfur, we walked around a bit, mostly so Chris could take more pictures. I found it ugly and smelly but still interesting, at least initially. After awhile though, I entertained myself with our GPS unit (we had a moving average of 2.8mi/hr on the hike, 45 minutes of stopped time (pictures) and had hiked a total of 4.81 miles roundtrip with about a 600 ft elevation gain/loss) and tried to increase Chris' efficiency by going ahead on the trail and scouting out potential pictures.
We had a good weekend, the only real complaints being the cold and the mosquitos, which weren't nearly as bad at Warner Valley. As always, it was good to be home to my pillowtop mattress and down comforter though.
Juniper Lake
Warner Valley
Devil's Kitchen
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