October 17, 2023

Fall camping is beautiful! ..... but....

Today's lesson, Kids, is never completely trust your Garmin GPS.
Or, better yet, pay better attention to it!

I took off early Tuesday morning for what was supposed to be an hour and 30-minute trip to the Clackamas River area where I wanted to find some dispersed camping and fishing.

Well, coming out of Estacada, Oregon, old Garmin decided it was going to take me a back way into that area and, being new out here, I just followed along not really paying much attention.

Next thing I knew, I was several miles into the 2020 Riverside Forest Wildfire area...driving through rockslides and overgrown underbrush and at some point, I finally stopped and took a better look at my Garmin.

Sure enough, it had put me on a 50-mile course of old forest roads. But, instead of turning around, I decided to take a shot at seeing where it was going to take me. Shoot, I'm in my 70's, retired, and in no hurry anymore anyway!

I did stop and take a few scenery shots and you can see in those the thousands of acres of standing burnt forest stretching out for miles towards Mount Hood. Of course, the deeper in I got, the worse the roads got...but the scenery was amazing.

I even followed a large male Grey Wolf for about 3 minutes down a cliffside portion of Forest Road 4540 where it disappeared into a small green belt area that popped up.

My hands were pretty full picking my way through a rockslide at the time and I couldn't get to my camera in time, but I did send in a wolf sighting report into the Fish and Game folks here in Oregon.

Forest Road 4540 ended for me in a heavy overgrowth area at the bottom of that ridge and that's where I had to turn around and retrace my steps back out and back to Estacada to start over.

So, my hour and a half drive turned into a 5-and-a-half-hour tour.

But it was worth it!

I eventually found a great spot right on the river and setup camp there for 9 awesome days. Beautiful fall foliage for sure!