Day 5

Day 5

My morning started off with a nice 6am dip into the Deschutes River, I was definitely refreshed. Jessie Larson Forest Technician lead us for the day into Lava Lakes trail where we assisted in clearing lodge pole pine and various other debri from the side of Lava Lakes Trail. Jessie first had us go over a few safety precautions and then we individually chose our own hard hats, safety glasses, gloves and I chose loppers to work with for the day. Jessie than walked with us and explained how to properly clear a trail, she showed us where to cut branches and what to do with the branches after they have been cut. Different tools required different instructions a lot of the males had bigger tools and Jessie showed them how to properly use those. The sun was out but we were provided a lot of shade from the trees and that made the physical work we were doing a little better. After a few miles of clearing trail we ran into Little Lava Lake and then we kept going onto Lava Lake where Mt. Bachelor was off in the distance and there were kayakers, guided tours and fisherman. I was so relieved to run into water since of all the physical exertion from clearing the trails I was low on water. After having clear Lava Lakes Trail with Jessie we took a quick hike back to our rigs trying to make sure that we made it out of there at 2pm to go shower. I’m always really happy to get to shower on this trip. Later when we got back we decided that we were all still feeling hot from all the physical energy we used today and most of our group decided to jump into Deschutes River to cool down. We had a lot of fun leaning up against this small log that had water cascading over us, so refreshing. Not long after our fingers began to wrinkle we decided to come back and we broke into a lot of snacks like raccoons on a mission. After the fruit snacks and jerky not fulfilling us we sat and started talking about ways to cook food without a propane tank or fire, the propane tank was with the other group and there was a fire ban in effect. After thinking for a bit I asked Theresa if the oven in the RV worked and we all started talking about sloppy joes and we all jumped up and started cooking, halfway through cooking we realized that we didn’t have sauce for sloppy joes so we used the hamburger for burritos, just rolling with it. Everyone in our group inhaled our first burritos and then our second group showed up and we already had dinner prepared and were visiting amongst ourselves. There was also a deer that must have smelled our delicious burritos and came to see what we were up to. The evening is slowing down and I’m about to watch a movie and then sleep, goodnight. 

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