Lost Lake Birding Stop

view from the Day Use Area

This trip over the Cascades was to attend a Mini Scott Family Reunion at my brother's house in Bend on Saturday.  Jeanette and I left in the van on Friday with a general plan to make stops along the way to bird and camp for the night before going on to Bend the next morning.  We first made a stop at Lyons City Park to have lunch and count some birds, and also walk around and count birds in John Neal Memorial Park. Our second stop to bird was at Lost Lake.  We thought this would also be our overnight camping location.  We picked a spot to camp near a picnic table, set-up our camping chairs, and sat down to enjoy the shade and a slight breeze and recover from driving. It was a great birding spot, we turned on our Merlin Bird ID app, and spotted birds with our binoculars, and got photos of passing by birds all from the comfort of our chairs. eBird Observation List

 

Osprey

Sandhill Cranes

Eventually we realized that we needed to walk back to the registration station and pay for the night.  I started looking around for the site number when I noticed a sign "Day Use Only".  Oh well, the cell service is lousy here, so we will just hang around for the afternoon, have dinner and then drive on to Ray Benson Sno-Park on the Santiam Sumit, which we know will have excellent cell service, and it's free. It's a short drive on up Highway 20 out to the Sno-Park, but we were totally shocked at the sight of hundreds of four-wheel drive vehicles in some kind of big event that totally filled up the Hoodoo Ski Parking lot, spilling over to the Ray Benson Sno-Park, with an obvious party flavor, dashing all our hopes for a quite evening. We drove on to Corbet Sno-Park only to discover it was included on some kind of overland route with the forementioned mega-party. In all we had checked out six locations before we eventually found a quiet hide-away in the Indian Ford general area and set up to wait out the heat of the day in anticipation of a cooler night. It had been a frustrating afternoon of dealing with hot temperatures and disappointing camping areas, but we were in agreement that Lost Lake was the highlight of our day.