Farewell to Washington Lake

…or what’s left of it.  The lake has been draining since the beginning of August to irrigate the farms in the nearby Summit County valleys.  We left Washington Lake on Tuesday, September 8, after closing the campground.

That’s right – the campground is closed.  This is unusual.  Normally Washington Lake is kept open until October 31, weather permitting.  This year, the Forest Service decided to bring in a logging contractor to remove the beetle-killed trees.  They will close the main road to the Crystal Lake Trailhead on the weekdays through September and open it for weekend hikers.  Fishermen can still park outside the campground and walk in, but the campground is closed for the season.

Labor Day weekend was also unusual.  We expected to be full by Wednesday, but found ourselves actually having people arrive after dark on Friday and get campsites.  Perhaps it was the late Labor Day; perhaps the cold weather forecast scared people away, but Labor Day weekend was relatively quiet.  Labor Day itself, a beautiful day, was more work than we had expected.  We had to turn dozens of people away so we could lock the gates by 1:00 PM. 

Just a couple of weeks before we left, I checked in a camper that looked familiar.  A little later he asked me if we had hosted in other places.  “Yes,” I said.  “Warm River?” he countered.  Wow – a camper who remembered us from Warm River.  Actually I remember his family group quite well – they were the ones who accused us of being too nice.  That was the thing about Warm River – they could have hired Attila the Hun as camp host and people would have still come.

Looking back on our experience at Washington Lake, it has a lot in common with Warm River. 

      Regular campers who come year after year.

·         The shuffle – campers who arrive early in the morning and wait for a particular site to be vacated.

·         Transfers from reservation sites to more desirable first-come, first-served sites.

·         Lots and lots and lots of people – all the time.  With Warm River it was floating the river.  With Washington Lake it was hiking the trails.

·         No place for fishermen to park – at least, not for free. 

·         A busy group area – or in the case of Washington Lake – multiple group areas.

·         Very few mice – we actually caught only two all summer.  At Warm River we attributed this to our co-host’s cat, John Wayne.  Not sure why there are so few mice at Washington.  Maybe they can’t take the altitude.

·         We were busy most of the time.  No rest for the wicked – or the good – camp hosts. 

We are home now.  The trailer is unloaded and packed away in storage, waiting for its next adventure.  Where will that be?  Keep tuned.

Farewell to Warm River

We left Warm River Campground on Sunday, September 29 – a day ahead of schedule.   Our final week in camp was cold, rainy, and almost deserted.  During breaks in the weather we were able to take all the signs down, clean and lock up the restrooms, and inventory and store the supplies. We even went to a Laundromat to wash our uniforms before we turned them in.  We hadn't visited a coin-op laundry since before we were married!  They take a lot more quarters than they used to, but other than that, they are pretty much the same.

Our summer of 2013 was a classic case of “Be careful what you ask for.  You may get it.”  When we applied with AuDi Campground Services, we stated that we wanted a busy campground.  Wow – did we ever get a busy campground!  Actually, if all we were running was a campground, it would have been perfect.  But we also had the group area and lots and lots of day users.  For most of the summer we were hopping all day long. 

When we signed up it seemed like it would be great to be out for five months.  We've learned that five months is a very long time to be away from home – even when home away from home is so beautiful.

That said, there was far and away more good than bad about this summer’s camp hosting experience.  For next year we’re shooting for something in between – not quite as quiet as Hoop Lake – but not quite as busy as Warm River.  We’ll also be looking a little closer to home.  As much fun as we had touring Eastern Idaho, Yellowstone Park, and Western Wyoming on our days off, we really didn't have enough time at home – which made coming home harder work than being in camp. 

The trailer has been cleaned out, winterized, and hauled off to storage.  Time to start looking for next summer’s adventure!

Fly Fishing

One of my favorite childhood memories is fishing with my parents and my brothers at Hoop Lake.  Dad had a six-man inflatable raft – bright orange – and a small electric motor.  We’d all pile into the raft and tour around the lake dragging flies from our fishing poles.  We’d even catch an occasional fish.  I think I was 30 before I realized that this was NOT fly fishing.

Fast forward to 2013 at Warm River.  I saw more waders during the first two weeks in camp than I had seen in my entire life.   I think kids here get their first pair of waders at about age 3.  And the Warm River is a perfect spot for both beginning and expert fly fishing.

Per Wikipedia, “Fly fishing is an angling method in which an artificial ‘fly’ is used to catch fish. The fly is cast using a fly rod, reel, and specialized weighted line. Casting a nearly weightless fly or "lure" requires casting techniques significantly different from other forms of casting.”  The cast has an elegant whip-curl to it.  The experts make it look effortless.

We had a number of fly fishermen – or I guess I should say fisher-people, as several women also waded our rivers with their rods in hand – in May.  As the weather got warmer and the river overtaken by kids on float tubes, the fishermen came early, walked further upstream, and most often – went someplace else.  But now that the kids are gone, the fishermen are back.

Many of our fishermen are local, but an equal number come from all over the world.  I’ve met fly fishermen from France, Scotland, England, and the Netherlands – and these were just the ones I actually got a chance to chat with.  Who knows where else they came from?

There are several fly fishing outfitters in Ashton and Island Park.  The Three Rivers Ranch, which is just around the corner from us, is a fly fisherman’s paradise.  They provide rooms, all meals (prepared by gourmet chef Karen), fishing equipment, guides and transportation.  I didn’t ask what it costs, but it sounds like an elegant way to learn to fly fish.  The head guide, Doug, plans to take a group of cancer patients fly fishing in October.   The owner of Three Rivers Ranch is the great-granddaughter of Fred and Berta Lewies, founders of the Town of Warm River.

I’m kind of sad that I didn't learn to fly fish here at Warm River.

Fall in Warm River

The days are shorter, the temperature is cooling, and the leaves are beginning to turn.  Yes, it’s fall in Warm River.  It looks like we have two colors – the yellow of the aspens and the willows and the browns of the service berry bushes.  Maybe next year we’ll be someplace where leaves turn red.

Our days are much quieter.  It’s like someone turned the tap off.  The hectic days of customers in and out, the Sunday shuffles, the parking mania – all gone in favor of a quiet campground with one or two trailers coming in along with the occasional tent camper.  The joke in Yellowstone is that the changing of colors in the fall has nothing to do with the leaves and everything to do with the hair color of the visitors.  In fall it changes from whatever to grey.  That seems to be working here as well.

The customers who have come in September have had a pleasant surprise.  The wooden bridge, which was

supposed to be torn down this fall, will remain for another year due to budget constraints.  So after dutifully closing the upper loop after Labor Day, we reopened it on Wednesday, 9/4. 

We've had quite a few bear sightings in the area, which makes sense.  During August and September the bear prime imperative is to EAT.  Eat.  Eat.  Eat in preparation for hibernation.  The smell of our food is just way too tempting.  A full grown grizzly was shooed out of the Buffalo Campground in Island Park just a few weeks ago.  We still haven’t had a bear in our campground, but a couple camping with us spotted and photographed a grizzly across the river about a mile up the Railroad Grade trail last week.  Several others have reported bear scat on the trail.  Sigh - my trail running days are over – for now.

We’ll be here in Warm River until September 30.  Then it will be time to start looking for next year’s adventure.

Warm River History

One of our more frequently asked questions here at Warm River is, “Where is the place where you can feed the fish?”  I learned the answer to that question the first week we were here – two stops signs, turn left, cross the bridge and pull over.  It seems to be a tradition of the families that camp here regularly.  They take large bags of bread, cereal, dog food, etc., pile it in the back of the pickup with all the kids and grandkids, and off they go.

Last Wednesday, I finally took the stale hamburger buns out of the microwave (yes, I use the microwave for bread storage) and we went to feed the fish.  The area is clearly marked.  No fishing.  No swimming.  No wading.  No float tubes.  The fish are free from every stress in their lives, and they are huge.  We tossed chunks of bread into the water and watched the fish grab them as quickly as they hit the water.

The fish-feeding site has a large historical marker titled, “Warm River – A Place of Community on the Frontier.”  What?  Warm River was once a town?  And there I thought we were famous only for our campground.  Here’s a brief history of the once-thriving community of Warm River:

Rounding the curve, music fills the air.  A moment later, a festive string of colored lights appears.  That was the sound and sight that greeted many people coming into Warm River.  They were headed to the Rendezvous Dance Hall where the sound of laughter and the aroma of hamburgers filled the air on a Saturday night.

The Rendezvous was the creation of Fred Lewis and his wife, Bertha.  Fred incorporated the Town of Warm River in June of 1947, and Bertha became its first mayor.  Warm River’s legacy dates back to 1896 when settlers arrived from Europe establishing farms and ranches.  Years later, Warm River was the stopping point for many travelers on a slow journey on a narrow muddy road to Island Park and West Yellowstone, Montana.  In 1907 Warm River’s popularity soared when the town became one of the stops for visitors traveling along the Oregon Short Line Railroad to West Yellowstone.

During the next sixty years the town in the canyon with its community of farmers, ranchers, and lumbermen grew quietly.  In 1957 the new highway to Yellowstone was completed, bypassing Warm River.  The town faded into the shadows, leaving only memories of a time when Warm River was a place of community and friendship.

The old railroad line is long gone, but the trail it followed remains and is popular with hikers and bikers.  Several summer homes now sit on Dance Hall Drive – the last traces of the town of Warm River.

Smarter than the Average Bear

Our campground may look like a city park, but we are smack dab in the middle of bear country.  The Caribou/Targhee National Forest is home to both Black bears and Grizzly Bears.  I use the word home quite literally.  We are the visitors, and as such it is our responsibility to ensure that their habitat remains the way nature intended.

What does this mean to us as campground hosts?  The National Forest has a very strict Required Food Storage Order.  The order “is intended to reduce adverse human-grizzly bear interactions, thereby promoting human safety and the protection of bears…”

The order requires that any unattended food, refuse, and attractants be stored inside hard-sided vehicles, in bear-resistant containers, or hung above the ground out of reach of bears.  The list of “attractants” may surprise you.  Bears are attracted to food, of course, but they also like deodorant, toothpaste, cosmetics and lotions.  Another surprise – coolers are not bear resistant.

Bears canvass their area searching for food.  Sometimes they run across a campground.  If they don’t find food, they move on.  Unfortunately, once a bear finds easy food in a campground, he tends to keep returning.  Once this happens, the Forest Service can attempt to relocate the bear, but more often than not they end up killing the bear.  It’s true – a fed bear is a dead bear.

We are required to enforce compliance with the Required Food Storage Order.  We do this to protect our campers.  And we do this to protect the bears.  Grizzly bears are protected in the lower 48 states.  Killing a grizzly bear in the lower 48 is both a federal and a state offense that can bring criminal and civil penalties of up to $50,000 and a year in jail. 

Here at Warm River we have places to store food for tent campers who have no hard-sided vehicle.  We also have bear-resistant dumpsters.  The bins are secured by a clasp through a ring – much too small for a bear to open. 

It took me a minute, but I did figure out how the clasp works.  I guess that makes me smarter than the average bear.  Let’s all be smarter than the average bear and make sure we don’t inadvertently attract bears into Warm River - or any campground.

Lap of Luxury

Our last camp hosting assignment was, well, primitive.  We were in a wilderness area accessed via a 12 mile dirt road just outside of Lonetree, Wyoming.  We had no electricity.  We had no cell service.  We had no internet service.  Our site was also a dirt “pull through”, complete with a large rock that trapped the truck as we tried to pull into it. Our contact with civilization came through our campers and through our weekly trips down the mountain.

Don’t get me wrong.  We loved it at Hoop Lake.  But in comparison, the assignment here at Warm River is truly living in the lap of luxury.  We are parked on a flat, gravel surface with a concrete patio where our picnic table sits.  Our front lawn is just down a few steps.  Up a few steps and we’re at the main signpost where we can greet our incoming campers.

We have full hookups – water, sewer and electricity.  We have a land line and DSL service.  The DSL seems to be intermittent, but it has worked at least part of every day since we’ve had it hooked up.  Our cell phones get very limited service here, but we are able to receive and send text messages and emails.

I have hot water on demand!  We chose not to run the water heater constantly last year to conserve propane, so we would have to turn it on and then wait ½ hour to shower.  I heated water on the stove to do dishes.  But with electricity and a new water heater, I turn the faucet and just like magic, hot water comes out.  On a personal note, Paul’s brother Jon helped him wire the water heater five days before he died unexpectedly.  We miss you, Jon.

Electricity allows us a few more luxuries.  I can use my percolator – no more “camp coffee” cooked on the stovetop.  Well, I kind of miss that a little.  We have a television and can play movies by connecting the laptop.  I don’t have to turn on a generator to use the vacuum.

The final luxury is our proximity to a real town – with a grocery store, a gas station, restaurants, and get this – a Redbox!  More about Ashton,  Idaho, in my next post.  

Welcome to Warm River

Greetings from the Warm River Campground!  Our new home-away-from-home sits about nine miles east of Ashton, Idaho, in the beautiful Caribou/Targhee National Forest.  We’re about 30 miles from Mack’s Inn in Island Park, and about 45 miles from the West entrance to Yellowstone Park.

The campground sits in an ancient caldera, about 1200 feet lower in elevation than any of our “sister” campgrounds.  This allows us to open earliest and close latest.  We arrived on May 3. The official opening day was May 5.

The campground, named for the Warm River that runs through it, features 15 RV sites and 13 tent sites. 

Every site is walking distance to the river, although some of the sites have longer walks than others. The roads are all paved, the RVs pads are paved, and the tent sites have sand.  The picnic tables are mostly new.  Two of our sites have electricity (sites 12 and 13).

Our site is the first site you’ll see as you come into the campground.  We have space for tents on the lawn in front of our trailer.  We’re told this is a very busy campground that will always fill up, so if you want your own space, you may want to make a reservation at www.recreation.gov or at 877-444-6777.

Yes, we have lawns!  The grounds are maintained by our new friends Jim and Debra, who will be our partners in camp hosting this year.  They live across the road from us in a trailer owned by a large, long-haired Siamese cat named John Wayne.  So far John and Ty have not met.  My money would be on the cat.

We’re gearing up for the busy season that should begin on Memorial Day weekend, but so far it’s been pretty quiet.  Lots of fishermen walk into the campground.  Now that we’re here we have to charge them to park.  They hate that.  They tell us that fishing is good.  We’ll have to find out how to get an Idaho fishing license – very soon.