Three Sisters Wilderness, Oregon

August 24, 2025

We took two travel days to get to our next destination, stopping halfway-ish at a free boondocking spot in Oregon along the Columbia River for the night.

No more mountains here in Western Washington

Oregon welcomed us with a nice 40-minute construction delay

It's the Columbia river again! We need to stop meeting like this 😉

The Columbia River Gorge

Our level and very easy to get into boondocking spot for the night

The area was scenic but quite windy (hence the windmills on the bluff)

We had an uneventful night, and although we were close to the highway and railroad tracks, we weren't bothered by the noise. Maybe we are just used to things sounding different every week. We got a reasonably early start the next morning and continued our southward journey.

Sunrise the next morning

Looking down at the boondocking area from the highway on our way out

A gorgeous travel day

Our first volcano sighting--Mount Hood!

After turning south away from the Columbia River, we drove through this canyon

Everything was more or less flat and barren here, but punctuated with random volcano sightings in the distance. We don't which volcano was the one on the right, as we didn't check where we were when we saw it. 🤷

After doing some grocery shopping in Redmond and picking up some Amazon packages in Bend, we had a change in scenery (and elevation) as we entered Deschutes National Forest.

Not so barren anymore

Another volcano--Mount Bachelor!

Soda Springs Campground in Deschutes National Forest was our destination. The campground is just off the Cascade Lakes Scenic Byway and is adjacent to Three Sisters Wilderness. For those that are curious, the three sisters (volcanos) are South Sister, North Sister and Middle Sister. We could kind of see South Sister from our campsite through the trees.

Our campsite was not in view of other sites, but the campground road ended up with more traffic than we expected.

We had a partial view of an attractive meadow. South Sister can't be seen here, but it is behind some trees to the right of the picture.

The packages that we had just picked up from Amazon were new tires for our bikes and new brakes for Julie's bike. Our tires never had the best of tread for off-road use, and what little tread they did have was considerably eroded away. Rick was eager to install the brand new tires, so he got started on that after we got set up.

Getting ready to replace the tires

The old tires were pretty bald

Off with the old...

...On with the new!

The new tires are fatter (4" vs 3") and have a much more aggressive tread

After getting all the tires on, the next order of business was to replace Julie's brakes

Old brakes coming off

New brakes installed

That evening, starting around 5:30pm, we started noticing random cars lining up along the campground road across from our campsite. At first it was just the occasional car, and we thought that maybe some people were coming to see the sunset or something, despite it being a few hours away. And then more showed up, and then more. Pretty soon, the road was filling up with cars.

We noticed that some people were hanging out in their cars, others seemed to be just milling about, others were wandering about in the meadow, and many were carrying bags. What was going on? Was it some kind of flash crowd event? We sat out on our deck eating dinner while more cars continued to line up. After a while, we noticed that some of the people seemed to know each other and about half of the cars had people carrying big cameras. Maybe it was some kind of photography club event? Just then, an obviously pregnant woman was walking back to her car in front of our camper, and she proceeded to change into some kind of lacy negligee thing practically right in front of us as we were sitting there eating dinner. She was accompanied by her likely significant other and a photographer. They returned back to the meadow. Curiosity got the better of us, so after dinner we went for a walk in the meadow.

Practically everywhere we looked, there were photo shoots going on.

We eventually learned (after this same scene repeated itself nightly) that several photographers from Bend use this campground as their studio for their photo shoots with their clients. Here are just a couple of examples from the myriad of photographers that advertise photo shoots specifically at Soda Springs Campground:

This is the exact negligee outfit that the pregnant woman changed into--I kid you not

You too can get married at some random campground where two random retirees can watch from their camper deck while eating their dinner!

In all our travels we have never had the experience of a public campground being used for private photo shoots. It was kind of annoying to have people whizzing by in their cars, kicking up dust from the dirt road all evening, every evening (and to a lesser extent, during the day on the weekend as well ). But, we were only going to be here for about a week, and we can put up with just about anything for a week. We were tempted to do some photo-bombing, and Rick even contemplated making a big sign that said "For $10, I will move out of your picture", but that would have been a bit out of character for us. And anyway, it's pretty easy to delete unwanted people from photos using AI nowadays.

All the photographers and clients were gone by morning, and the new day was promising to be quite nice. We decided to test out our new bike tires by taking the nearby forest service road to Sparks Lake. The road was only about 1-1/2 miles long, but it was gravely, pot-holed and wash-boardy. The tires performed admirably, and it was probably more comfortable riding our bikes along this road than it would have been in a car.

The end loop was hiking instead of biking

Sparks Lake

We walked a portion of the Ray Atkeson Trail that provided intermittent views of the lake

Coarse lava rocks are interspersed around Sparks Lake

Alas, this photosphere somehow disappeared without a trace from Rick's phone

Lots of lava along the trail

There was still snow down in the crevasse

That evening, we appreciated why so many people wanted to get their picture taken at our campground...

The next day was absolutely gorgeous--clear blue skies, and highs in the upper 70s to low 80s. We drove a short distance on the Cascade Lakes Scenic Byway to the Six Lakes trailhead. It was one of the few nearby trails that we could hike without having to reserve a special permit ahead of time. The popularity of the Three Sisters Wilderness has increased quite a bit in recent years, so only a limited number of permits for certain trails are made available per day to limit crowding and damage to the environment. All of the permit-only trails were sold out on this day, but Six Lakes apparently isn't yet a casualty of the Instagram craze.

The Cascade Lakes Scenic Byway

The forest was very pretty here

Blow Lake--the first lake we passed on the trail

Doris Lake--the second lake

We stayed at Doris Lake quite a while and had lunch

The clear water was very inviting

Presumably, the trail continued on to four more lakes, but the next lake was a few miles further away, and Doris Lake was supposed to be the nicest anyway. So, we headed back the way we came (no loop this time).

The forest was so quiet and peaceful, and we only encountered a few other people along the way

We made a brief stop at Elk Lake on the way back to the campground

Since it was a warm afternoon, we decided to splash around in Soda Creek across from our campsite before the hordes descended for the nightly photo frenzy.

The grey line shows where we walked. Incidentally, the white line is the road that we biked to Sparks Lake the previous day.

You can see our camper through the trees

Shadow selfie 😉

In the evening, Julie managed to get a few shots without people in them (mostly)...

The classic "girl in dress walking in a mountain meadow creek" shot

The next day was equally gorgeous with cloudless blue skies once again. This time, we decided to really put the new bike tires to the test with some more extensive forest service road riding. We drove a few miles to the Todd Lake trailhead (that we incidentally couldn't hike because the permits were all sold out), and we managed to snag the last spot in the parking lot to unload our bikes. It's really handy to always have our folding bikes with us in the truck. (I guess it's pretty handy to have basically half of our earthly belongings always with us in the truck 😉.)

Part of the road went through lush forest

Probably one of the Three Sisters--don't know which

Other parts of the road went through more arid areas

We are happy to report that the new tires performed so much better than our old bald ones. We didn't take any pictures of some of the more sketchy parts of this road, but there were sections that were hilly, rutted, rocky, sandy, and washed out. Julie felt considerably more confident that she wouldn't wipe out (and she didn't). With the old tires, it would have been white-knuckle riding for her on parts of this road for sure.

That evening, smoke suddenly appeared in the skies, and we learned that a new wildfire had ignited the previously afternoon approximately 50 miles northwest of Bend. That put the fire about 50 miles northeast of us. We weren't concerned for our safety, but the mountain town of Sisters (that we visited in 2023) looked like it could be in its path. The smoke didn't deter the nightly photo parties, but there may have been a few less than usual. As is often the case with wildfire smoke, it produced an especially photogenic sunset.

On Saturday, we lazed around in the morning, as we figured all the local people would be out and about on the trails and such on the weekend. The smoke had dissipated and we enjoyed the quiet of the campground before the cars started showing up in the afternoon. By the time cars were lining up for the daily ritual, we were heading to Bend to pick up our second Amazon package, do some grocery shopping, and go to Mass. The smoke wafted in again as we headed downward toward Bend, and it stayed with us, in various degrees of intensity, until we left on Monday.

Passing Mount Bachelor while coming back up from Bend

A stunning smoky sunset

The landscape almost didn't look real

On Sunday, Rick installed the contents of our latest Amazon package--a new, more powerful cellphone booster. Our current booster had allowed us to get marginal service in some of the places we previously couldn't get any service. The hope with the new booster is that we will get good service in these places and marginal service in at least some places that we currently can't get any service. Time will tell!

Since Rick was moving the location of the router and new booster, he made a bit of a mess of things

New amplifier--much bigger than the old one!

New location for the router and inside antenna

The outside antenna was half filled with water. Amazingly, it still seemed to work. Rick emptied it and re-sealed it (hopefully better than the factory had done!)

Next up--Crater Lake National Park (our second time)!

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