July 1, 2013 Day hike into Blue Lake Southern Oregon

Today is supposed to be hot in the Rogue Valley,  Carrie and I plan on leaving around 8 am for the hour + drive to the trailhead, the hike is 4 miles round trip.  By 9:00 it was almost 90 but it had lowered to mid 80s in the forest as we drove higher into the mountains. We started hiking and immediately were surrounded by mosquitoes, the bane of Oregon hikers.  Luckily we had Deet which helped a bunch  but Carrie had already become a meal, bites all over the backs of her legs. It was a down hill hike into the lake, we met 3 hikers coming out as we went in.  Blue Lake is situated at the base of a cliff with boulders strewn down the mountain side and into the lake at one end.  We made our way to the boulder field where there had always been a log sticking out that we'd used as a jump off into the lake. This lake has been the site of many of our family backpack trips in the past, we hadn't been back for 12 years so this was a place full of fun memories for us both. After a nice lunch and cool swim we decided to look for the spring that we remembered was a quick walk from the end of the lake. We wandered down a wrong trail for a mile or so but as we backtracked we found our side trail to the spring. We were looking for a log fence structure surrounding the spring but over the years it had decayed and fallen down.  We studied the trail side as we walked along and finally saw the tiny spring bubbling out of the ground cold and clear. When we filled up bottles taking deep drinks we had to hold our hands over our throats as the water froze mouths!  What a treat on a really hot day! Once we'd cameled up we looked around at the setting, found a small Leopard Frog in the cold water,  pretty flowers bloomed all around this marshy meadow. Much as I wanted to rest longer we needed to get back up the trail and to the car.  Round trip this was a short hike to a beautiful basin, lots of other lakes to visit and poke around if we'd had more time. Driving back to the Rogue Valley the temperature showed 105!! It was a great day to spend in the mountains.