Lake of the Woods, Oregon - June 11th to 14th, 2024
Aspen Point Campground is a National Forest campground on Lake of the Woods in Oregon. We were looking for something between Lassen Volcanic National Park and Crater Lake National Park. Lake of the Woods turned out better than we imagined. It was a lovely destination in and of itself.
Tuesday was a long travel day, not for the number of hours driven, but for the long stops along the way. We were going from Manzanita Lake Campground in Lassen Volcanic National Park in California to Aspen Point Campground on Lake of the Woods in Oregon.
We spent a couple of hours in Lava Beds National Monument along the way, then we hit the road again. Our exploration of the Lava Beds was covered in our previous post (Lava Beds National Monument, California - June 11th, 2024).
It was laundry day, actually well past laundry day, and we were tired of handwashing clothes to have something clean to wear. We stopped at a laundromat in Klamath Falls, Oregon. Fortunately, it was right next to a grocery store. So while Keith was in the laundromat, Ann went next door to shop. We were thankful of the convenient location that saved us time. It was already getting late in the day.
It was another 45 minutes of driving to reach the Aspen Point Campground on Lake of the Woods. Before we set up camp, we stopped at the RV dump to fill up our fresh tank. It cost $12 to dump, but it was free to fill up potable water. Since we already dumped our tanks at Lassen Volcanic National Park before we left, all we needed was fresh water.
Our camp site was not very level, but we managed to make it work. By the time we were settled into our site, it was 6 pm. Instead of cooking dinner, we ate leftovers.
After dinner, Ann went for a walk around the campground and day use area. The woods seemed denser and the plant and animal life more abundant than what we have seen on our trip so far. As the sun was setting, the mosquitoes came out. Ann decided it was time to take refuge inside.
Wednesday was a lazy, relaxing day. Around lunchtime, we went for a walk to explore the area. The Lake of the Woods Resort was a short walk down a wooded trail. We spooked a deer in the woods along the way. The resort is also on National Forest property. It includes a lodge, cabins, restaurant, general store, marina, dock, and swimming beach. A variety of boats are available for rent.
We split a pizza from the pizzeria at the marina. We sat at a shady picnic table outside the marina, overlooking the lake. The pizza was made to order and pretty decent. The boaters kept us entertained while we ate our lunch. A bald eagle soared over the lake.
After lunch, we continued our walk. The High Lakes Trail is a little over 9 miles long and runs from the far side of the Great Meadow, past Lake of the Woods, and continues to the far side of Fish Lake. We walked a small section of it. First we went over to the Great Meadow, then followed the trail to the tip of Lake of the Woods. Then we followed the shoreline of Lake of the Woods back to our campground. A social trail continues past the campground and over to the cabins of the resort.
The rest of the day, Ann worked on a blog post while Keith worked on Red Tail. He replaced the batteries in our outdoor temperature sensor, as they had died a couple of days before. He installed an Obie Organizer net on the back wall of the cabinet under the passenger side bed. We store spare toilet paper, paper towels, and our laundry backpack behind our laundry basket. It doesn’t stay very organized as those items like to flop around. The net should help.
Keith spent most of his time working on our Starlink install. He switched out the electrical outlet that we plug the Starlink router into. He changed it from a regular outlet to a switched outlet, so we won’t have to plug and unplug the router all the time. It was a little hard to do that with everything we have on the shelf below the router. Of course, he was short some wire, so he couldn’t quite complete the work.
Thursday, we went for a hike nearby. AllTrails calls the route Brown Mountain Trail, but that is a little bit of a misnomer. The trail starts at the Summit Trailhead, just a few miles west of Lake of the Woods on highway 140. The route starts out on the Brown Mountain Trail which joins the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT). After crossing the highway, the Brown Mountain Trail turns left, but the AllTrails route goes straight, following the PCT. We believe the Brown Mountain Trial goes up to the summit of Brown Mountain, but, like the AllTrails route, we stayed on the PCT.
From the trailhead, the trail crosses, then follows alongside a stream before crossing the highway. The mosquitoes were out in full force. We didn’t linger and managed not to get any bites. Once the trail left the stream, the mosquitoes left as well.
The PCT then ascends at a nice, gradual slope. It alternates between forest and rocky lava fields. During the last mile, there were a handful of trees that we had to duck under, crawl over, or hike around. At least it wasn’t even close to 100 downed trees across the trail like our Lone Pine Tree Trail hike in Rocky Mountain National Park a few years ago (Rocky Mountain National Park: Western Slope - September 14th & 16th).
The AllTrails route luckily didn’t have a highlight at the end because we turned around a little early. There was a large, bushy tree across the trail. It looked like the only way around it was to scramble across the lava boulder field. That didn’t sound like fun to us. In fact it sounded like a great way to get hurt, with either a twisted ankle or cuts and scrapes from the rough, sharp lava rock. We decided we were close enough to the end and started heading back.
We picked a boulder field with a nice view of Mount McLaughlin to sit down and eat our lunch. The rock Ann picked out to sit on wasn’t very stable. She had to be careful not to have it roll on her.
Our hike for the day was 5.7 miles with an elevation gain of 584 feet which we completed in three hours. It was hike number 28 of our 52 Hike Challenge for 2024.
Friday was a day of errands over in the town of Medford. We’ll cover Medford in our next post.
After returning from Medford, we relaxed back at our camp site for an hour. Then we walked over to the resort for dinner. The restaurant asked if we had reservations. They were expecting a large group and asked us to try the lounge upstairs. If the lounge didn’t have any free tables, the restaurant would have put us on a waiting list.
We had no problems getting a table in the lounge. They serve the same menu as the restaurant. It is just more of a bar atmosphere than a restaurant atmosphere. We didn’t mind. We had a table next to a window with a view of the lake, marina, and BBQ courtyard.
The resort had an extensive menu. Keith ordered the red snapper with mashed potatoes while Ann tried the pesto fettuccine with chicken. Both of our meals included a house salad and a seasonal vegetable, which currently was asparagus. Both of our meals were delicious.
We walked over to the restaurant along the lake shore, but it was windy and chilly, as the temperatures were dropping. So we returned to the campground via the other trail through the woods. It was a little warmer since there was no wind, but the mosquitoes were out. Choose your poison. We still haven’t picked up many bites yet, but we see bug spray becoming a necessity in the near future.
Lake of the Woods provided a variety of activities to make our stay enjoyable. Had it been a little warmer out, Ann would have taken her paddle board out on the lake. In addition to beautiful scenery, boating, a swim beach, fishing, a restaurant, biking and hiking trails, is there anything more you would want at a camping destination? We can’t think of anything.
Check out our related video: Lake of the Woods, Oregon
(Ann)