Foster Lake and the 4th of July at Fern Ridge Lake, Eugene, Oregon

Hi all! Well, so far this spring and summer, we have had some great boating adventures. With this being a 4-day weekend for us, we thought we would boat as much as possible.
Now, we bought our MacGregor Motorsailor to take the place of our West White Potter and our little runabout motorboat. Well, if you've read my beginning posting (The Beginning of Nautical Nonsense), you know that Craig was very attached to his little runabout motorboat. So for some reason it's still sitting in our pole barn, always ready and waiting for us to take it out.

So July 1st, we took the little gem up to Foster Lake with our younger kids, Sydney and Nick, and our grandson, Dominic. We played on the lake, puttered up the arm where the North Santiam River feeds into the lake, and Craig pulled us all on water tubes.

As you can see, our 4-year-old grandson had all he could take and Syd thought she'd get a little shut eye too. He even slept through Craig pulling Nick on the tube, out in the main lake, where the waves were big and choppy and we were being tossed all over the boat.

It was a great, hot, day and we were worn out by Saturday night. We had to have Dominic back to Katie by 1:00 PM on Sunday and Sydney and Nick to their mom by 6:00 PM that night so it was pretty much a lazy day between trips.

When we got to Fern Ridge later Sunday night after dropping off Sydney, Nick and Dominic, it was still pretty hot (it had been in the 90s that day). The boat was covered with the usual spiders and cobwebs and bird poop, so we started cleaning it up. After getting everything cleaned and put away, we made a trip to our favorite grocery store, Ray's Market, in Veneeta, and got some goodies and a movie. When we got back and it had cooled off enough we just watched our movie and relaxed with our goodies. Life is good....

Monday we walked over to Orchard Point, a marina and park on the other side of Fern Ridge Dam. (The dam is in the background of this picture, with Orchard Point to the right.) (Oh, that thing in the water is an amphibious crawler, well, that's what we called it anyway!) It was a long walk and we were beat by the time we got back, but we found out there was going to be a live band, BBQ, and fireworks on the 4th! We had no idea they celebrated at the lake, so we were pretty excited. Later, while we were out on the lake, we saw our friends, Tom and Marti, out sailing their boat. We invited them to share our BBQ'd steaks and spinach salad for dinner, while giving us some pointers on sailing our new boat. We had a great time and the winds were awesome!
We had it heeled over and it even dumped our ice chest on the floor. I've been spending a lot of time inside the boat, making sure everything was in its place so it wouldn't get dumped, but these winds were the best we've had yet!
We really had a great time. I don't think Tom and Marti left until after midnight, and they had to drive back to Corvallis! I hear they slept in the next morning to recuperate! :-)


Tuesday we took the boat out to do the jungle cruise, that Tom had told Craig about. There's a canal that runs along Highway 26, about 12' deep and it goes thru some wetlands and a little stand of trees. It's kind of narrow when you get in the trees and does kind of look like a jungle cruise and because it's a wetland you can see and hear all kinds of birds, which added to the jungle feel.

It was something different and we were loving it, but a few trees were laying over the canal and we couldn't get our mast to clear it, so we had to turn back.....
Well, we're not the kind to give up, so we came around the other way, so we didn't miss anything. And of course, I got some great pictures of the birds that live in the grasses and dead trees and water.

After that, we headed back to Richardson Marina to take showers before the fireworks started. It was fun to see all the boats anchoring out, to be in position when the fireworks started. As you can see, some of the boats were very patriotic.

I was so mad we didn't have our flags too! As we were watching the fireworks and seeing the boats scattered all over the lake, we felt very proud to live in a land of the free, home of the brave! I'm going to have a flag on our mast by the time we go on vacation. Yep, we're PROUD AND BLESSED to be AMERICANS!