We had a rare free weekend for a change, and I wanted to get out and do something fun, so I decided we would go up to Goose Lake, which I have heard has good trout fishing. We got up at 6am and drove up to Trout Lake, and stopped by the ranger’s station to ask about conditions. She asked what we planned to do at Goose Lake and I told her we brought our kayak to go paddling.

She said “This name is going to sound off-putting, but you might have more fun at Mosquito Lake, because Goose Lake is super popular in the summer.” Dave said later she probably took one look at us and went ‘oh, these aren’t Goose Lake people, I’d better send them to Mosquito Lake!’

So we zipped on up there, and almost blew right by the parking area, because it is so small. Just room for 4 cars, just off the PCT, but the lake looked glorious! Beautiful clear water reflecting the perfectly blue sky.

We put in at the beach by the parking area, and then had to weave our way around a little serpentine path to get out to the lake. Along the way we had to go over an old collapsed dock, and it was pretty shallow and narrow. But pretty soon we were out there, and I cast out a streamer on my sinking fly line and let it drift behind us as the breeze slowly blew us across the lake.

No need to paddle when you’ve got wind!

Dave is helpful for holding my rod while I tie a new streamer on after losing one in the reeds. We drifted halfway around the lake before I checked and discovered it was gone – doh!

We paddled back across the lake to the starting point, but we were really fighting the wind, which had picked up a bit. We could only make progress when we were both paddling hard together. Back at the parking lot end I spotted this little area in the reeds where we could park it for a bit and not have to fight the wind. I’ll be glad when the rest of my anchor parts show up – an anchor would have been really useful today!

The water was the clearest I’ve ever seen. You could see all the way to the bottom over most of the lake. There were lots of water lilly pads still under the water. I’ll bet this lake will be packed with them later in the summer.

Sitting in the reeds we could see some little trout – like 2-3 inches. I guess they were trout, they were shaped like trout and had spots. We had fun watching them, while just kicking back, discussing vacation plans, and enjoying the day. When we had enough, I cast out my streamer one more time and we paddled back to the parking area. I didn’t even get a bite, though I saw a lot of big fish jumping. Maybe next time.

The best part of this trip – no mosquitoes and NO people! Yes, we had this little lake all to ourselves. It was so quiet you could sit and just hear the wind blowing through the trees. Sometimes you could hear a car driving by on the forest road, but that was about it. As we were packing up to leave, another car drove up with 2 kayaks on top. Well now they could have the lake to themselves!

On our way home we decided to go by Goose Lake just to take a look at it. Along the way we saw a sign for Natural Bridges and stopped there. The area was a collapsed lava tube.

Kind of hard to get the scale without a person in the shot.

I’m not sure that helps, but it was a really big tube, maybe 50 ft deep. And in places there were natural bridges where the tube had not collapsed fully, and you could cross over the culvert left by the tube.

It’s just really hard to photograph. Neat area though. I would like to come back here next time we are nearby and work on photographing it better. There is a lot of interesting lava in this part of the woods, and Goose Lake itself is right next to The Big Lava Flow, which looks very rugged, but we were too tired to explore today.

We continued past Goose Lake, and although the lake was pretty, it was full of partying people, and so not for us. We continued to Stevenson, where we stopped at our favorite lunch spot for post-Gorge activities, Big T’s Diner in Stevenson, Washington, with a spectacular view of the Columbia River Gorge and delicious Hawaiian Burgers. We enjoyed our well-earned lunch which watching wind-surfers playing on the river below. The perfect end to an unexpectedly perfect day.