Today I want to give thanks to my partner and significant other, Bob, for going swimming with me almost every day this last week. We skipped Friday because it was windy. But every other day we went somewhere. Last Sunday we went to Clear Creek. We were lucky to be the only ones there. Then on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday afternoons, after I got off work, we went to the Eddy in Indian Creek, a popular local swimming hole. We either went upstream or downstream to avoid the other swimmers. And then yesterday, Saturday, we drove north to the Illinois River in Southern Oregon – about fifty miles from here.

Taking the Illinois River Road north from Selma, Oregon, we found a number of enchanting swimming holes. We stopped at two of them. The first one was too crowded for me, but Bob got in and swam across the Illinois River a few times. Then we drove further down the road and settled on a swimming hole down a long but well-developed path.

I was impressed by the development done in Oregon to provide access to their swimming holes. They engineered a path along a very steep hillside including a metal staircase down a rock face at one point. We don’t see anything like that here in the Happy Camp area. The first Illinois River swimming hole we stopped at had a nice parking lot with two attractive picnic shelters.

Before driving up the Illinois River Road north of Selma, we stopped at the Visitor Information Center in Cave Junction, Oregon. While there, we asked about swimming hole access and the two women running the center were very helpful in telling us where to go. One of them mentioned several times that “undesirables” were at many of the swimming holes, so we were on the lookout for the type of people she might find undesirable.

I think we may have found them here:

Here’s where we went swimming, just downriver from that spot:

On the way home we stocked up on a few needed supplies at the market in Cave Junction. I bought acai juice, twelve gallons of distilled water, seven Clif Bars, a big bunch of bananas, a gallon of my favorite ice cream, tortillas, and an Oregon lottery scratcher.

It is 40 miles over a winding mountain road to get back to Happy Camp, and my ice cream was melting by the time we returned, but I’m happy to know my favorite ice cream is now in the freezer because it isn’t available here in Happy Camp right now – since the ice cream freezer at the Double J liquor store and mini-market went out.