Sunday, October 3, 2010

Camping near Prineville ORegon on Crooked River

We did it again, on the spur of the minute we decided to go camping with my cousins Jim and Beverly English and Faye and Jack Groves.  We drove to Prineville, about a 5 hour drive from our home in Irrigon Oregon.  The weather was wonderful, we had really warm almost hot days and very cool but not cold nights.  We had lots of good food and played "Train" dominoes and just enjoyed the outdoors and good company.  Here are some pictures of the country in that area of Oregon and the river and camp area.  The area is kept up by BLM (Bureau or Land Management) and the cost is very afforable.
We drove about 5 miles from our camp site to see the earth dam that was constructed to make a large resavore that the Crooked Rived flows from.  The BLM have taken over the many camping areas along this river giving a lot of people a great place to spend time.  We seen lots of fishermen on the river too.

Beautiful lake behind the dam.  It affords lots of boating, swimming and fishing for the public.

In this picture you see the Crooked River and high on the hill you see a rock they call Chemeny Rock and the camp area we are in takes it name from this rock.  Beautiful isn't it.....

Looking down the river from our camp area, look at the clifts, the road goes around that hill. and the road is above us.


In this picture you see Jack and Jim; Jim is securing my table cloth with bungy cords, worked very good. It is morning so we still have our coats on.

A view of our modern camping "rigs", I can remember when Arlo and I would go camping and we didn't have a tent or sleeping bag.  We put the kids to sleep in the car (Cynthia in the front seat, Sandra in the back seat and Greg in the trunk, Arlo and I slept on the ground with quilts and had a great time doing it. :)) Now we have every comfort.

You can see the smoke from our camp fire.

Lots of tables and we would use one until the sun was on it then take our game of dominoes to another table in the shade...

Here you can see Beverly, Faye, Jack and Arlo just resting and enjoying the wonderful day.

I surprised Faye in her RV kitchen starting part of Breakfast.

Beverly coming our of their RV getting ready to enjoy breakfast.

Arlo and Faye, noticed Arlo has been able to take his coat off. :)

Jack, Arlo and Jim in camp.

Dinner is on the gril and Jim let me take a picture before he closed the gril, the steaks turned out really good!

We took a little ride when we went up to see the Resivore (lake) and this road runs to the West toward Bend and in the far distance you can see the Three Sister mountains and also Mt Bachelor to the far left.  Will put up another picture that lets you see the mountains better.

This is sure a long straight road and looks like there isn't a person anyway around but going down this road for a ways we see lots of homes and mail boxes indicating families living where you coundn't see the actural homes.

A duck floating down the river, we seen many but didn't know just what kind this bird is.

Just a picture of our camper, it isn't new but it works for us and is very comfortable.

A picture of a field and the hills, there is an interesting rock about the middle of the picture .

In the top of the tree on the left side you will see a large crane (bird) and it was the first time I had seen one roost in a tall tree, always before had only seen them standing in water.

In this picture we were happy to see a deer watching us and in the picture you can see there is more than one deer.  They didn't stick around long.  Deer season is open but only for the male or Buck.

Arlo is sitting there but wanted you to see the nice fire pit that is provided.  Jack had a bucket of water sitting handy incase it was needed.  We did not leare a fire unattended.

Breakfast the last day we were there, Jim cooked pancakes and bacon and sausage on the grill I fixed scrambled eggs, we had orange juice and milk, what a breakfast.  We usually had a hugh breakfast then didn't eat again until  after  3 in the evening.

Another picture of our breakfast table. :)

Here we are back in Prineville at Jack and Faye's place we all  parked and spent the night then we left around 9 Sunday morning.  Had a great drive home, we went the back way and had a lot of up and downs and went up over 4500 feet twice amd drove along the John Day River part of the way.  Seen several head of Deet and even seen a couple Antelope.  Seen lots of hunters and their camps along the way too. Rifle hunting season for Bucks opened on Saturday.
We were glad to get home and only one thing marred our end of trip and that was we couldn't get the ball to release from the trailer os had to work hard to get a bolt out and we did get the pickup relesed from the trailer but the ball is still with the trailer. :)  We got every thing from the trailer and emptied the tanks, except need to take the water out of the fresh water tank and hot water tank, but it will wait until tomorrow.  Must say good night as tomorrow is my morning at Day Surger and think 4 am will come all to soon.
So thankful we have been able to enjoy Heavenly Father's wonderful outdoors and our family members.
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