Summer with all it’s heat has decended on Central Oregon.
What this means is we’ve shifted our outdoor activities to the morning hours, and if we are out in the afternoon heat its near a stream with plenty of shade.
While it might approach 100 degrees by midday, it has dropped to a refreshing 45 by the next morning.
This week we decided to explore a spot on the western edge of Crane Prairie Reservoir. There is a short hike to a birding spot on the reservoir’s banks that typically we drive by on our way to favorite fishing haunts on the upper Deschutes. This morning we started there.
Osprey Point is an interpretive trail, no camping and only one picnic table. This day there were no cars in the parking area, but the path is well worn so it’s not always so private.
The trail winds through lodgepole pine forest with twists of blowdown that would make off trail walking difficult.
At the end you breakout onto the southern reach of a broad marsh. There is a crescent shaped area with willows, grasses and lots of snags for nesting that runs for half a mile of shore line and is about 500 feet deep.