Today I took a school bus load of kids from Pendleton's Sherwood Heights Elementary School to Lehman Hot Springs. This was my last school bus "trip" for this school year, and I found it most enjoyable... reliving some days gone by.
My co-worker Carolyn driving Linus and I driving Lucy, took two bus loads of kids, teachers, parents to these hot springs, in the middle of nowhere, near the northeast Oregon Gold Rush country. While there I told Carolyn of my earlier experience at Lehman Hot Springs some years ago and remembering the old rustic log lodge that once stood at this site.Now, let me tell you a bit about what I know/ remember of Lehman Hot Springs... it was about 50 years ago that I made my first trip into the middle of "Nowhere", OR and my family spent the day at Lehman Hot Springs. Today it is not quite the same as it was then.
I shall digress just a moment... while growing up I had a love for log cabins/ log lodges and always wanted to live in one or the other. I could remembered in my childhood, there being a rustic log lodge that set in Northeast Oregon in a large Ponderosa Pine forest somewhere near the Pendleton area. I also remember at about that same trip in time that the old headlights-on-the-fenders logging trucks that came out of the forest were fully loaded with 3 sometimes 4 huge log trunks on their trailers. Today it is not quite the same as it was then. Now the late model air conditioned logging trucks come out of the forest carrying 50-75 sticks (like teepee poles) on their trailers.
Anyways, back to Lehman Hot Springs (interesting info link)... upon moving to Oregon, I asked my aunt where might there be that log lodge near the Pendleton area, that I remembered from my childhood. She told me it was probably at Lehman Hot Springs.
It wasn't too long after telling Carolyn about my early experience around these hot springs that I noticed there were pictures on the walls of days gone by. Walking around the room I saw the old rustic log lodge of Lehman Hot Springs. Asking the manager about the lodge, she told me that it had burned down many years ago, she had never seen it herself but had heard people talk about it. This day gave me a trip through time. The picture above of this resort is dated 1899.
Today these hot springs are piped into three concrete bathing pools and one cold water swimming pool. Today the water temperature in the upper pool was 114
°F, the middle pool temperature was 104°F, the lower pool was 90 something degrees and the air was full of snow. Yep, when we got to the springs this morning at about 10 a.m., it was snowing. During the day we may have had 10% sun breaks with mostly rain and snow showers throughout the day. Upon leaving the hot springs at 3:00 p.m. it was snowing... that's living with the weather in Northeast Oregon; usually in April and May. It was a perfect day for kids to play/swim in the great outdoors of our beautiful Oregon Territory.
This was an enjoyable day trip, as the drive along Hwy 395 is quite beautiful this time of year. Driving through Ukiah, OR (for the first time in years/ since moving to Milton-Freewater) little there has changed, except a couple of businesses' doors had closed. Upon getting to the hot springs, I was able to take a few pictures of the kids at water play (with Carolyn's camera), and had time to read some of a horse textbook. A rather relaxing day at work.
a day in the life --- Dale
1 comment:
Keep up the good work.
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