Hosmer Lake

In the last week, Ann and I have succumbed more to the Bend lifestyle, purchasing an inflatable paddle board and an inflatable kayak. Ann was more than eager to take them for their maiden voyage and chose Hosmer Lake for their trial run. Hosmer is situated in the Deschutes National Forest 20 some miles west of Bend on Cascade Lakes highway, the road to Mt. Bachelor and beyond that is dotted with lakes every couple of miles.

Still brand new to the area, this trip would be our first out Century Blvd/Cascades Lakes Highway beyond Benham Falls to Mt. Bachelor and beyond. As we reached the first of the sno-parks, Virginia Meissner, we started seeing huge swaths of brilliant scarlet flowers on the roadside, intermixed with vast stands of purple, blue, and lavender penstemons. We saw that they were heaviest just east of Wanoga Sno-Park and made a mental note to stop on the way back to look at the wildflower display up close and personal.

Seeing Mt. Bachelor and the Three Sisters is an everyday occurrence for us, one that we marvel at and do not take for granted. The scenery in this part of the world is breathtaking. However, we are used to seeing the mountains from Bend or from out Skyliners Rd about ten miles west of Bend. We have never seen Bachelor up close and it got taller and taller the closer we got, an almost perfectly symmetrical cinder cone dominating the landscape.

Bachelor dominates the landscape around it, sort of. Just as you cross its northern flank going past the ski resort, Broken Top and South Sister come screaming into view. And as tall and dominating as Bachelor is, South Sister takes no crap from it, looming 1300 feet above Bachelor. And even the super otherworldly looking Broken Top is taller than Bachelor. It is hard to put this in perspective all the way back in Bend.

Mt. Bachelor from Hosmer Lake

We arrived at Hosmer Lake in the lunch hour, after much of the morning crew had vacated the lake, making finding parking fairly simple. We set about inflating our craft and got out on the water within 15 minutes from the boat launch at the end of the parking lot. The water in this lake is both clear and shallow. In the noon hour, I could not see any fish in the water, but it was rare when I could not see the bottom: the average depth of the lake is three feet.

Getting Ready to Hit the Lake

Leaving the Boat Launch

Mt. Bachelor from the Boat Launch

Blue Dragonflies on Ann's Foot

I wished I had brought my camera along, but I still haven't figured out how to keep it dry. That will come with time and experience. I would have loved to have photographed the four tiny baby Mallards that their mom let me slide right up to in the kayak. I stopped paddling some distance out, turned broadside to the ducklings and let the wind push me right to them. While mom was talking gently to them and they to her, she never got animated in the least by my presence and let me get within three feet of them.

There was no shortage of other birdlife to photograph including hundreds of Red-wing Blackbirds (no Yellow-headed ones though) posturing and feeding young. Gliding up to an island, I was able to get within about ten feet of a Flicker nest hole and watch the female come and go with food. Red-headed Ducks were more skittish and I could only get to about ten yards before they would fly further or dive under water. Once I heard a Bald Eagle whistle, but could not locate it or the two American Bitterns serenading the lake area with their booming calls. At one point out on the biggest part of the lake, Violet-green Swallows were grabbing insects right off the surface of the water with trout launching skyward in the midst of whatever was hatching.

Out in this same middle part of the lake, I was watching as Ann made her first successful attempt at standing on her paddleboard, if only for a few strokes before she kneeled back down. I am sure that like most things, it will take a bit of practice to become proficient.

We wound through the S-shaped channel between the two more open parts of the lake as we went from one end to the other. It appears that vegetation is slowly overtaking the lake and converting it to a marsh. All along the edges up to the start of the cattails and rushes were large rafts of both Yellow Pond Lilies and Longleaf Pondweed floating on the surface. In addition to the brilliant gold flowers of the pond lilies, the edges of the water were blooming with white Ladies' Tresses orchids, poisonous hemlock, Cow Parsnip, and many other unknown plants. An especially striking one with dark wine-colored blooms that lined much of the shallow water, I finally identified as Purple Marshlocks, Comarum palustre.

After three hours on the water, we reluctantly came back ashore and packed up for the trip back to Bend. On the far side of Bachelor, we stopped just past Wanoga to look at the beautiful display of wildflowers. As soon as I got out of the truck, I could see that the masses of brilliant scarlet blooms were Scarlet Gilia, a flower that I have seen recently along the Deschutes River Trail in Bend.

Scarlet Gilia, Ipomopsis aggregata

The purple and white blooms interspersed with the Gilia were all penstemons. I noted about five different species in the area, including white-blooming Scabland Penstemons, P. deustus. The majority of the penstemon plants that I saw were either Glaucus (P. eglaucus) or Ash (P. cinicola). With my limited ability to identify penstemons, I feel that they were probably Glaucus.