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To the lake by way of the loneliest road

Writer's picture: kaydee777kaydee777

Updated: Aug 2, 2024

Day two of my roadtrip, from Mystic Hotsprings, Monroe, Utah, to Summer Lake Hotsprings, Paisley, Oregon was the longest in terms of miles covered (around 800) and hours spent behind the wheel.

Wanting to avoid busy major highways and especially Salt Lake City’s urban sprawl, I picked a scenic route which had me going up and over mountain range after mountain range, through the geologic wonder of the Great Basin where watersheds have no outlet to the ocean, mostly in Nevada, and spending a good part of the day on HWY 50, also known as the Loneliest Road in America.

I wanted scenic and lonely and I got that in great heaping spades full on this leg of the journey.

It was hundreds of miles of just me and the Red Pony in a vast, seemingly unpopulated landscape made, in the early part of the day, soft and cool by altitude and summer’s gentle greening. The plethora of chain up areas told a story of a snowy route in winter.

Besides the remote beauty of the landscape, the carrot that kept me going on this arduous day was the thought of my campsite in the high desert of eastern Oregon at Summer Lake Hot Springs which came with unlimited soaking 24 hours a day (Mystic Hotsprings I’m looking at you) in natural spring fed pools.

The sun was low in the sky when I arrived at the encampment.

Even though temperatures were in the upper nineties, I wasted no time getting up to my ears in that silky smooth hot mineral water.

In part it was because my body was aching and tense all over from such a long up down up down winding scenic drive, but the major imperative for immediate immersion was the biting horseflies and mosquitoes. What an unexpected pestilence they proved to be! It was Little St Simon’s Island in September all over again.

Besides the outdoor sunset facing, rock lined pools, the original bathhouse contains a big 4-5 foot deep pool in which one can swim laps. Or merely float.

There were less of the beastly, bloodsucking predators inside this historic building.

Unfortunately I couldn’t sleep in the pool giving the mosquitoes opportunity to feast on me during the parts of the night when I tried to sleep at my campsite in a field alongside the springs.

In the pre dawn hours the pools were still and reflective. Dragonflies hovered, hopefully feasting on mosquitoes.

I slipped under water again to watch night slowly seep away and the sun rise huge and unsettlingly ruby red filtered through wildfire smoky haze.

No one else at the resort was up at this early hour. I had all the soaking facilities to myself. The colony of rabbits who surrounded me were not interested in getting into hot water.

After this contemplative predawn through sunrise soak, I roused myself to swim some laps and put my body through a morning routine of aqua yoga stretches and bends in the big indoor pool. Land based yoga plagued by biting insects didn’t seem an attractive choice.

It was hard to drag myself out of this lovely, smooth water, break camp and get on the road again. The sounds of other campers stirring helped me though. I was refreshed and restored by my solitary dawn hours in the water. I didn’t want to squander that precious gift with the chatter of strangers.

Before I left the area, I took some time to explore the little dot on the map town of Paisley Oregon (population 250 in 2020 census).

It didn’t take long. The town is really small and the dilapidated saloon is up for sale. Sadly, a few of the handful of houses displayed really horrible, hate filled and profanity laden political messages on flags and yard signs. “…I will show you fear in a handful of dust…”

Apparently the mosquito is the town deity. They honour their god with a mosquito festival in late July every year and display graven images of it carved in stone in what passes for town square.

Obviously I didn’t do enough research that I only found this out when I was already in the place and was carrying the itching welts as evidence that I had sacrificed enough blood to make a million more mosquitoes.


Had I known about the mosquitoes and biting flies would I have still planned to camp in this swampy place in midsummer? Probably.

Crane Hotsprings in Burns, Oregon, was an alternative bivouac choice which I abandoned when I discovered that Summer Lake (which is actually a swampy wetland more than a lake) is on the flyway of the migratory birds, some of whom overwinter in the place where I tend a garden and minister to an old house right now. Going to Burns would have made that second day of the journey at least an hour longer plus Summer Lake Hotsprings looked less developed. But ugh! Mosquitoes! My nemesis.

Still following the scenic routes, but now scratching a myriad mosquito bites all the way, on the third day I explored the sagebrush scented Oregon Outback, then crossed the forested (oh! tall trees!) Cascade mountain range to get to the central Oregon coast where my feet had a date with the salt water of the Pacific Ocean and I had old friends to catch up with.

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