Southern Oregon Ramble - Fall 2003
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-Idleyld Park and Steamboat Inn |
Idleyld Park and Steamboat InnSince they're threatening to drop the "Paget in Belize" list for lack of activity again, I've decided to tell you about a ramble in Southern Oregon that my sister, Jeffi, our friend, Sheila, and I took in early September. We left Portland on a Sunday, expecting to cover about 800 miles before our return on Friday. Actually it was over 1,000 miles (every one of them driven by Sheila) before we got home. First, we drove down I-5 about 200 miles nearly to Roseburg and then up the North Umpqua River to the launching area for fishing, hiking, rafting, hunting and other outdoor pursuits, Idleyld (pronounced idlewild) Park. This is after the obligatory stop at the Rice Hill Drive-In for Umpqua ice cream. There are two great ice creams in Oregon -- Umpqua and Tillamook. Whichever one is best depends on which one you're eating at the time. The Rice Hill Drive-In on the west side of I-5 is one of the very best places to get Umpqua ice cream. They sell so much that it's always absolutely fresh and they have dozens and dozens of flavors. I had a fresh blackberry shake, Jeffi had a butter rum malted and Sheila had hers in a dish -- double chocolate fudge and peppermint. Then on to Idleyld Park. This is a gathering of motels and lodges, an art gallery and a general store just outside the Umpqua National Forest. We stayed for two nights at the Idlyld Lodge (http://www.idleyldlodge.com/), a grand and rambling old building with many add-ons over the years and the least expensive rates in the area. The hosts told us that the site had been an Indian gathering place for hundreds of years, since it was near one of the few sweet water springs in the area, most of the other springs are sulfurous. The lodge is chockfull of antique furniture, dolls, wall decorations, chandeliers, jewelry, antimacassars and many other things -- among them 1,500 wedding and other gowns (upstairs) and an even more impressive (we were told) array of camouflage and related army surplus/survival/hunting gear. Alas, it never worked out for us to inspect these last two wonders, so you'll just have to imagine them. We were entertained by the goldfinches outside and the cats
and caged birds inside and That night we had a dinner reservation at Steamboat Inn, about 20 miles up the road. Steamboat Inn is an upscale resort, famous for their food and fly-fishing. We were not disappointed, the food was fabulous and the company upscale. As Jeffi said, we had drinks and dinner with "some serious cash." During the wine and hors d'oeuvres, we were entertained with a slide show by a guide from Esquel Outfitters in Argentina, Carlos with-a-German-last-name, who was making a pitch to the guests to come to Patagonia to fish with them there. From the comments and familiarity, it appeared that the host and several of the guests had already been there. In one of the slides, Carlos' daughter, a blond maedchen in what was surely a red dirndl, stood before a large garden where they grow all the fresh vegetables and greens for the facility. Another of Carlos' selling points was the long hours of evening daylight and, he boasted, we don't start the fishing day until 9:30 or 10:00 am. Well, there isn't much going on before then anyway, he added. What? Their trout don't eat at sunrise? Maybe not, maybe ours don't either. I'm not a fisherman, but it seems like lots of people in the area go fishing for a while before they go to work in the morning. Anyway here's a little on Esquel: http://www.johneustice.com/argentina/esqoutf/esquel.html. (Note the Portland-based trip planners.) For dinner at Steamboat, you can reserve a table for your party (3 groups did) or you are seated and served family-style at a long wooden table. We did the communal table. Our dinner companions, 7 or 8 of them, were interesting and the food, as I said excellent -- salad, salmon, red potatoes, fresh green beans, apple pie. As dessert was being served, the host announced that a special guest was Jack Ward Thomas, celebrating his 69th birthday, so we all sang "Happy Birthday." I had a hard time remembering why he was famous, but Sheila knew right away. Thomas is a retired head of the US Forest Service, a post he was promoted to after brokering the northern spotted owl controversy in Oregon and Washington and serving as a lightning rod for criticism of federal policies. This owl nests in old growth timber and is on the endangered species list, so theoretically at least, it means no logging in federally-owned old growth. In the early and mid 90's, the conflict between loggers and environmentalists in the Pacific Northwest was ratcheted up many degrees by the listing of the owl in 1990 and many still view it as the death knell of the timber industry in the Pacific Northwest. (If you're interested there's some decent information here: http://www.lib.duke.edu/forest/usfscoll/policy/northern_spotted_owl/.) The fact that Thomas was warmly welcomed here is probably _not_ an indication that his recommendations were Solomon-like or that all is forgiven or even forgotten, but only that there were no loggers or former loggers in the room. The area we were in is the last large stand of old growth timber in the country and residents cling tenaciously to the notion that logging can again be the economic engine it once was, if we just get rid of these pesky regulations. But none of that was on our minds, really, as we drove back to Idleyld in a series of rain squalls, just the satisfaction of a good meal and good company and 5 days of vacation ahead of us.
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