Tuesday we moved farther south, LaPine State Park just south of Bend.
Site 76
When I want to register I looked at the posted list of reserved sites. A Diana Sorens had reserved 14 sites for the night. They started at site 77 which is just across the street from us. There were two guys (in site 77) in a large hunter’s tent setting by an outside fire enjoying themselves. What we found out was these two guys had come out the day before as the advance crew for three 5th grade classes from Amity public schools. Two small school bus and one large bus drove up about 15 minutes after we had camp set up. This was the first day of a 3 day outdoor camping adventure for these kids, all 75 of them. Plus adults it reached 90 people. Two of the teaches came over and filled us in on there trip. They do this rather than going to paid camp like the 6th graders do from Enumclaw.
The other day I commented on the price for a campsite at Maryhill State Park $45.00 a night for water, sewer and electricity. As a comparison our site at LaPine has water, sewer and electricity for $26.00 a night. I will not comment on why difference in cost other than it is not the quality of site or location.
We came over Chinook Pass and through Yakima.
Here’s a campsite picture of site 14.
In site 41 to the tune of $45.00 a night.
We do have a site right on the Columbia River and it is 79 degrees. 
This is from the edge of our site.
Here are Friday’s fish. 
I spent Saturday putting it together and getting it seasoned. In the evening I learned to fillet trout and put they in a brine I learned about at Bradley Smoker’s website. After filleting 10 trout I started to figure out the process. One of the key elements of filleting small trout is to sharpen the knife between each fish.
By the way here is Friday catch, looks a lot like Wednesday and Thursday.
Here is the smoker getting ready to smoke fish.
75 minutes we have smoked trout.
And yes it is good.
Here is lunch:
But I did cover a lot of the lake. I caught the first four in about 45 minutes (got to the lake around 8:00 a.m., I don’t wear a watch since I retired so I don’t always know what time it is) and then didn’t land the last one until after 11:00 a.m.
One of my retirement goals was to start doing some lowland lakes trout fishing. Today was my first day out on Lake Wilderness. I got to the lake a little after 7:00 a.m. and had my five trout by 11:15 a.m.
They range from 8 to 12 inches.
This is an aerial view of the lake’s location.
My boat is the yellow one sitting in the lake.
Here are a couple of pictures of truck I recently purchased and by fishing/sail boat. It has actually taken a while to get the boat cleaned and to rebuild the trailer. It needed new tires, lights and hitch coupler.
It was a good day and I’ll be out again tomorrow morning. Tanya is giving me her BBQ now that she is moving to Poulsbo and I think I have figured out how to use it to smoke trout.
Here is the aerial picture:
On the walk we saw two coyotes, and I got a picture of the second one.
I didn’t take a before picture, this is after the old coupler was cut off and I was cutting the welds off with a hack saw. I did a lot of the cutting with a 3 inch air cutter I purchased from Harbor Freight several years ago. I think I paid about $7.00 for it.
You got to love Harbor Freight.
Here is another picture of hand cutting the old weld bead off the trailer frame.
The new coupler, it is much better condition then the old one and should keep the trailer attached to the truck. I’m looking forward returning to fishing this spring.