Sparks Lake

We managed to escape the heat wave last week by spending several days in beautiful Sparks Lake. We go with several choice friends and canoe into our favorite camp site. There are other families that love this site too and have fixed it up over the years. They have built a table with benches for our meals. They also put up shelves between two trees for shelves in our "kitchen" area. There are many nice spots for tents and the best part of all is the site is in a little cove so our water hole is nice and isolated.

The sun was hot and the water was cool so it was easy to keep cool in the heat of the day. With plenty of trees around there was always shade to find, but we did have to move our chairs around throughout the day. It was perfect for some reading as well as wonderful conversations with good friends.

Each couple planned and prepared several meals so we had delicious meals and plenty to eat. This year tended to be a bit of a Mexican theme to our meals as we had breakfast burritos, taco salad, nachos and enchiladas as well as a few more along those lines. We also had an abundance of fresh fruit and melons. Yum!!!

The canoe trip to the site takes about 30 minutes. On our first day we had to make two trips to get all our stuff. Since the canoe does all the work of packing everything in we bring all the comforts of home. My idea of ruffing it is sleeping on a blow up queen size bed. I don’t do well on the ground or in a cot.

Steve wanted to do his part this year to improve the camp. He always picks a nice spot on a little rise for our tent. There is a little path that leads to a gully that has to be crossed to get to our site. Several years ago someone built a nice little bridge to cross the gully. There are some very sharp volcanic rocks on the path to the bridge so Steve wanted to chip away at the sharp points and make the path a little safer. He planned ahead and brought along a chisel, hammer and gloves for the work. He had taken care of most of the rocks and had one more to go. Something happened while he was hammering and the chisel slipped and the hammer hit his thumb pretty bad. He didn’t think too much of it at first until it picked up his hand and blood started pouring out of his glove. He tore it up pretty bad.

One of the men cleaned the wound and bandaged him up real good. Just before dark we decided to change the dressing. When we took it off it was still bleeding. Everyone took a vote and decided he probably needed stitches so we headed off in the canoe to the launch to get our car. Thankfully we had a GPS which lead us directly to the hospital. They stitched him up and sent us on our way. It was nearly midnight by then and our friends said we could stay at their vacation trailer in La Pine rather than try and canoe back to the camp in the dark. What a blessing that was for us.

Steve didn’t mind the injury, because it gave him a good excuse to just sit and read his books for the rest of the time we were there. Since that is what he really wanted to do in the first place he was as happy as a clam.

Other than that little mishap we had a wonderful time. This year we went from Saturday to Wednesday. Next year we hope to be able to stay the whole week up there with good friends and Heavenly Father’s beautiful creations.