Spring Break 2019 – Days One and Two: Seattle, WA to the Owyhee River (First Camp)

We have been running over different spring break scenarios for months. Due to high water volumes in the Klamath River (CA), we ended up swapping plans last weekend to do the Owyhee River instead. The Owyhee is known as Oregon’s Grand Canyon. After the four-day river float, we planned to drive south to ski for a few days at Heavenly Ski Area (south end of Lake Tahoe) before heading home.

We drove from Seattle to Nampa, ID on Friday (about 8 hours). We stopped in the middle of Oregon for a short detour to see wagon ruts on the original Oregon Trail. This was particularly cool because Edison just finished a unit learning about the Oregon Trail. We stayed overnight in Nampa, eating take out Thai food in our hotel room, to lay up for an early start Saturday morning.

We drove the remaining two hours to the Owyhee River put in at Rome, Oregon on Saturday morning, passing through some spectacular scenery on the way and some really interesting clouds and colors.

 

The ramp already had a lot of rafters rigging up. Eben had done such a thorough job designing and creating the oar frame system that loading up went really smoothly. We filled out a little boater registration card, set up the Tahoe for the shuttle pick up, and shoved off at about 10:00 in the morning.

 

The Owyhee flows north. We did a 51-mile section from Rome to Birch Creek which is called the “Lower Owyhee.” Rafts are advised to not go on it under 1000 cfs. It was running about 4500 cfs on this trip.

 

 

 

The weather forecast called for thunderstorms and rain starting about 3:00 that afternoon with the weather improving each day after that. We were hoping to set up a camp and beat the rain after making 15 miles or so on the river. The bad news is that the storm came much earlier than we planned. The good news is that we were able to score a camp at river mile 8 (First Camp) fifteen minutes before it started raining. We had the tent set up and full of gear and also the sunshade set up as a canopy just as the first drops began to fall. We ate our sandwiches huddled under the awning as the front passed over bringing hail, heavy rain, wind, lightening, and thunder. Eben had double-staked it, but we still had to pull it down so that it wouldn’t rip out of the ground and blow away. We were very thankful to have shelter and all of our gear out of the rain. 

 

A clear patch of weather followed an hour later that provided a small window to play bocce on the beach and warm up with hot drinks. But then a steady rain came for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening. It stopped raining sometime after we went to bed. We ended up spending most of the afternoon alternating between hanging out under the canopy with a drizzle around us and stuck in the tent. It was raining so hard by the evening that dinner was peanut butter sandwiches grabbed quickly out of the food box and eaten in the tent. We played many hands of Crazy Eights and read our books until it was time for bed.