Early Fall Camping on Sparks Lake

Second week in September...  Fall is in the air, but the nice weather is still holding.  It was expected to be in the low 80's in Bend this weekend, so I figured it might be a good to try a last camping trip in the mountains with Hunter and Noah before the weather turned.  I expected it to be cool at night since the lake is at 5400 ft - almost 2000 ft higher than Bend.   My plan was to take them out in the canoe to a wilderness camp site at the far end of Sparks lake. (Kelly and I did a moonlight canoe on Sparks in early August)  Its impossible to get a camp spot here in the summer time but I figured September would be fine, and it was.  This would be their first non car camping trip!  They both did their soccer games in the morning and we headed up to the cascade lakes around 2:30 Saturday.  We probably got on the lake around 3:30.

Here we are launching and going to the camp site.  Also note, it seems to be frog season at Sparks.  The shores and water was covered in these tiny frogs - see the bag full the boys collected.  

We found a nice spot on a bluff at the far south east end of the lake with a view of Mt bachelor in the background.  Lots of lava for the kids to climb and and explore while I set up camp.  Hunter remembered slicing hot dogs like a squid  from our trip to Canada 3 summers ago so we did that again this weekend.  

The night was cold but not as much as I expected.  There was only a slight hint of frost the next morning.  In the morning we dressed warm initially but once the sun came up, it was really nice.  We hung out, ate, played, read some devotionals about the outdoors  and set out for our return journey.

We stopped for lunch and some scrambling on this neat uplifting of lava not far from the return point.  It was great fun to scramble up the narrow fins of rock.  Also being late season the water in the lake was super shallow in parts - you can see it in some of these pictures.  

A short but super fun night out.  The boys loved it.  I think we will try and make an annual trip of this each September!