As I’ve written before, one of the perks of being volunteers at Lake Cascade is to see  friends as they come to the mountains to escape the Boise heat.   We were glad to see  Rick, Gail and Ozzie when they came through.   Thanks for spending part of your mountain time with us!

   We have also had friends come from farther afield.  We met Carl and Ruth during our first volunteer gig in Oregon in 2015 and have been able to see them several times since.  We were delighted to see them kayak in!   They truly gave us the gift of time with a ten day stay at Lake Cascade!

Carl and I are the paddle boarders.  Randy is committed to spending time on my board this summer and I hope he learns to like it.   Paddling would be fun to do together.

Ruth and I enjoyed some paddle board sit and float time.

Ruth and I went to historic Roseberry to poke around.   Roseberry formed when  homesteaders came to the area in the late 1880s and was named for the first postmaster.

By 1910, Roseberry was the largest town in Long Valley having two churches, flour and saw mills, stores, a hotel, schools, a newspaper, bank, blacksmith, doctor, veterinarian and lawyer.   It was a happening place with a sizable Finnish population.

In 1914 the railroad line located 1.5 miles west and much of Roseberry was moved to the new town of Donnelly.     Roseberry was left almost a ghost town.

The general store continued to operate until 1939 when it too finally closed.   The store is now opened for exhibits and some purchases.   It is one of the few original buildings remaining in historic Roseberry.   Notice the Finnish flag.

Other originals include the Finn House and related structures.

The Methodist-Episcopal Church was built on this Roseberry site in 1904.  It was moved to Donnelly in 1929 and moved back to Roseberry by the Long Valley Presevation Society in 1973.

The building housing the Valley County Museum used to be a schoolhouse in McCall.

The Whitney-Fairbrother School, once located near Lake Fork, was moved to Roseberry and restored.  

In my former life as teacher, I never even considered paddling a student.

I didn’t consider living within these rules either!

In between all of our visiting, Randy spent considerable time and effort on his maintenance project for the park – replacing a pole fence.

The previous maintenance host had done much of the Poison Creek fence and Randy was highly motivated to get that completed.   It took him a day or two to get his flow but then just plugged along steadily.   He had help from a seasonal worker one day and a little from me another but did the vast majority of it himself.

One evening he decided to work while it was cooler.   The mosquitos were brutal.   After some Benadryl gel, Randy’s back looked normal again the next morning.

He used three different drills for different tasks.

To power them he used our Honda generator that we’ve had for 5-6 years and never used.  He was glad to see that it worked very well.

When he was done with the campground section it looked great!

We had a celebratory strawberry daiquiri! When I saw this picture I told Randy it was a good thing I loved his dad!

We concluded our time with Ruth and Carl with some more floating and boating.   We called this photo op the “walking on water” shot.  Thanks Carl!

I always make fun of feet photos and then took one myself as I was trying to get Carl and Ruth.

We were hoping to see moose on our kayak trip through “the meanders” north of McCall. We saw more dogs playing in the water than wildlife but still enjoyed the paddle and the beautiful scenery.  The reflections were so perfect.

Ruth took this one of us, perfectly reflected along with the trees.    Thanks for a great visit Carl and Ruth!  We can’t wait to see where we meet up next time.