Tumalo State Park, LaPine State Park, Detroit Lake State Park

Okay, there are 4 state parks that I’ve visited in the past month and am counting towards this lofty goal. As you can see, 3 are listed here. The fourth is Champoeg State Park, which we camped at for my birthday about 2 weeks ago. As luck would have it, we’re actually heading back there today for their Apple Harvest Festival (depending on the success of Lillie’s nap), so I’ll post something about that upon our return.

Now, as for these, I wrote a little about them in my post about our trip to Bend, but I’ll do yet another re-cap here.

 

The first of the three parks was Tumalo State Park, which is outside (I believe to the west) of Bend. It’s not huge but it is be-a-utiful! The day-use area is on the banks of the Deschutes River, where Pat got a little fly fishing in.

I don’t know if it’s clear in this picture, but there is actually a bit of a canyon that the river flows through with a rock wall on one side of the river and a grassy bank on the other. While Pat was fishing, Lillie and I hung out in the grass, where there were plenty of picnic tables and horse shoe pits. There was also a swimming hole just downstream from where Pat was fishing (although I don’t know if I would have braved swimming as that water was COLD!).

The campground is on the other side of the road and there three loops with Yurts in one of them. They do have showers—solar showers. I don’t know if this means that you can expect a cold shower on a cloudy day or not. I will, however, find out as we are going to camp there next June! (Yes, June! Until our kids are old enough that we don’t have to worry too much about temperature control, we’ll be yurt/cabin/etc campers!)

Now, my real test of a park is the bathrooms. Yes, that’s pathetic and I know it, but it’s true. I didn’t check out the campground bathrooms, but I did use one in the day-use area. There was a sign on it saying that maintenance on that bathroom was “limited” because of budget cuts, but I will say it was a darn clean facility! So, score one for Tumalo! What it didn’t have, and I don’t think I should expect this in the state parks, is a baby changing table so Lillie had to tended to on a picnic table. Oh well, she’s too young for this to cause too much therapy when she’s older!

The second park we visted was LaPine State Park, which is on the other side of Bend near the town of LaPine (duh!). Of course, I have yet to actually see the town of LaPine, so I’m not entirely sure it exists.

Like Tumalo, LaPine has a campground which looked like a nice one, although we only just drove around. Instead of yurts, they have cabins and deluxe cabins (deluxe cabins have kitchens, bathrooms, televisions, gas grills and, I think, cabana boys to fan you with palm fronds). As I said in my earlier post, I actually have camped here before but I was like 4 years old and with my mother in a RV with her Sweet Adeline friends. All I remember of the trip is having my fingers nibbled on by a chipmunk). No, I did not check out the bathrooms, but the ones in the campground looked decent enough.

Now, Tumalo does have a day use area, but you apparently have to hike from the parking lot to get to any place that you would use during the day. As we had Lillie with us, we didn’t feel like stopping and hiking around in hopes that we might find something. So, ask someone else who has been there what they think. There!

We did, however, stop to see Oregon’s largest Ponderosa Pine. It’s big, it’s tall, it’s a tree. Okay, that was a cop out on my part. It is a noticeably bigger tree than the other trees and now we can say that we saw it. There is about a quarter-mile hike down to it, which was manageable with Lillie. The Deschutes River is not too far beyond it, but you really aren’t supposed to access the river there. Pat says that’s a shame because that is actually a prime fishing spot. Go figure.

On the whole, LaPine was a fine park, but it was somewhat disappointing after seeing Tumalo. Sometime in the future, we may go back and take more time to explore it, but this past visit didn’t really excite us.

The third park was Detroit Lake State Park. Now, I grew up going past Detroit Lake on our way from Salem to Bend and I’ve got to be honest here, I really am not a fan. It’s a big man-made lake with lots of fishing and speed boats. I actually think it’s far more interesting when they’ve drained it so you see a field of water-logged tree stumps—it’s kind of apocalyptic looking. But then, there are lots of people who love Detroit Lake. I know my brother goes fishing there a lot (which makes me think that Pat will soon go fishing there a lot).

So, there are actually two state parks there…the other one being Mongold State Park, which we did not stop at. I think that may have been a mistake since I think Mongold is actually just the day-use area for the Detroit Lake State Park, which is the campground. I’ve got to say, though, it isn’t a very nice campground. For one thing, it’s right next to the highway so there isn’t any place—other than going out in a boat on the lake—where you can escape the road noise. Also, it’s just, well, dirty. Both Tumalo and LaPine (and also Champoeg) just feel very clean and well kept, but Detroit isn’t like that. It’s sort of the park on the wrong side of the tracks. And, um, the bathroom is not exactly a place where you’d want to “meditate,” as my mom says.

While I was in the bathroom, Pat did drive around the park and there is a boat ramp, which is great if you have a boat. (We actually do have a boat! It’s sitting in our garage. Until we get the hitch put on our vehicle and get the boat registered with the state, though, it’s going to stay in our garage). Of course, Mongold also have a boat ramp so there is no reason to use Detroit’s boat ramp unless you are actually camping there.

So, there you go. 3 down, 186 to go…..

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Tags: Detroit Lake State Recreation Area, LaPine State Park, Tumalo State Park

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