We had a wonderful time on Delintment Lake, a beautiful high mountain lake about 50 miles from Burns, Oregon:
Our dear friends: Dana, Cindy and Matt from Portland met us there on Sunday, August 2nd. We were all looking forward to a great week of fishing and catching up. The day they got there their refrigerator quit working. Not a problem, we just packed the coolers and filled our fridge. The weather was hot and perfect for swimming. Even Sage learned to swim out and get on top of the inner tubes!! Spectacular feat considering she refused to go in water that reached her knees!
We caught beautiful 12-16” trout, It was VERY hard work reeling in those monsters. Just ask Ron!
Total bring home was about 16 trout. Nice. (I out fished Ron…. For once!)
Tuesday, August 4th we drove into Burns to get more ice for the coolers. On the way back from Burns we turned on the air conditioner and heard the fan making the most awful grinding rattling thumpa thumpa thumpa noise. It was so loud that you couldn’t hear each other talk in the pickup cab. We just knew a bearing or something important had gone out. It was triple digits outside so we figured if we ran the air conditioner on low we could tolerate the thumpa thumpa thumpa as long as we were getting a wee bit of cool air from the vents. And a very wee bit of air we did get. It was a toss up whether to take apart the fan or leave it alone in hopes we would still have the wee bit of air for the drive home on Sunday.
Thursday, August 6th the mystery thumpa thumpa thumpa got the best of Ron and he took apart the fan motor and found…….
Six teenaged chipmunks. SIX. In a rather neatly arranged nest inside the fan. They’d been around the block (uh.....fan) quite a few times. I felt sorry for the critters. (yes, they had all passed on to that great nut house in the sky)
Friday we woke up to 40 degrees and pouring rain --- buckets of rain. Late Friday afternoon our friends headed back for Portland. We braved it out and Saturday was sunny, warm and perfect for fishing fishing fishing!!
We left Sunday, August 9th. I made sure to leave a whole bag of peanuts scattered around the rocks and in the holes with a note pinned on the rock extending our deepest sympathy at the loss of the Chipmunk family.
We stopped in John Day and got a sandwich. It was getting a tad bit warm so we turned on the air conditioner….
THUMPA-THUMPA-THUMPA
Took it apart in Prairie City and dug another nest out of the fan. No bodies this time but LOTS of chewed up black foam rubber and material that looks suspiciously like firewall material. I no longer feel as sorry for the nasty things as I used to and I wanted to go back and retrieve the peanuts. There is still something in there that we just can’t quite reach and rattles when we turn on the fan. I’m sure we’ll get it --- sooner…..or later. I just hope they didn’t stash away in the camper somewhere and hitch a ride back home with us. This could get ugly.
When we got home, the city had our road all tore up. Water main broke. After that was fixed we still had no water. We had a water break under the house. Actually we had a lake under the house, minus any trout. Called the sprinkler man (it was his pipe that broke) he responded as quickly as one could on a Sunday evening and all was well in the water world about 10 pm. Boy! Did that hot shower feel good.
Missing our friends but glad to be home with wonderful memories. Until the next adventure......
