“The Cabin”, Hotsprings, & Sailing!

Let the sailing summer begin!

Back-story:  Garrett and I have been friends for eight years.   Ever since I’ve known him, I’ve known about “the cabin” – a family-owned piece of heaven somewhere in the Oregon woods.   Despite all our talk and my love of the outdoors, I’ve never actually made it to the cabin – until now!

Back-story #2: Garrett’s newfound love is sailing.   A big part of my summer plans  were joining some of my Humboldt “family” (Toby and Nathan) on their summer sailing adventure  whenever  they made  it up to Oregon/Washington from Cali.

Obviously it was perfect for us all to meet up at “the cabin” near the rather large Detroit Lake in Oregon!

We had four days  and three nights of bliss!   The first day Garrett’s  childhood friend Micah joined us.   By late afternoon we had the boat (Lhungta  or “good winds”) on the water and were enjoying a gentle sail.   Then it was off to the cabin to de-winterize, cook up some grub, enjoy libations by the fire, play music, and laugh and talk all night!

One of my favorite mini-rituals I adopted at the cabin was a morning run in the woods.   It was an awesome way to start every day – dashing through the trees!   Second favorite: outdoor showers.   My new traveler shampoo is awesome, and it was so fun to fetch water from the spring, scrub down in the sunshine, and then douse with pot after shocking  pot of water.

Micah took off early the second day, and the rest of us  hit up the lake for  a day of bonafide sailing.   It was great!   We were so exhausted at the end of the day, we didn’t even make it to the hot springs after dinner.

Our third day dawned  full of rain clouds, so we opted for hiking instead of sailing.   The unusually late  precipitation and low temps that plagued (helped?) most of the western U.S. this spring/summer meant Garrett’s favorite trail was still snow covered.   We went a few hundred yards on a slushy three foot snow pack, but my sandals (didn’t have room for boots!) weren’t up to the sloppy challenge.   Instead we navigated back roads Garrett always wanted to explore and ended up on a gorgeous, lower elevation hike to a lake surrounded by blooming Rhododendrons.   Amazing!

We made it back to the cabin in the late afternoon and went for a daylight dip in the hotsprings.   After our busy day, I practically melted.   At dinner, the increasingly brave chipmunks (we thought we’d been protecting our food from mice) started joining us indoors.

After my last cabin run 🙁 we chipmunk proofed the cabin (as best as  one can) and went to pack up the boat.   A sudden downpour left the three people with rain jackets handy doing the final tie down while I supervised from the car – sorry boys!  (see photos.)   Garrett’s aunt and uncle live an hour from the cabin, so we stopped to see them on our way to our next adventure.   They sweetly let us do laundry (Toby and Nathan were especially hurting in this department), made us an amazing cobbler, and let us fix dinner in their kitchen.   Pinna and Terry were so charming, warm, really engaged, and interesting folks to talk to.    We wished we could have stayed longer!

We parted ways with  Garrett in Salem – he headed south to Eugene, and we  made headway on our ultimate  destination –  Lake Chelan,  Washington!