Bend, Oregon - Cascades Lakes

It's not called the Cascades Lakes Highway for nothing. There is a whole series of lakes along the route and they all have their own kind of beauty.


This is Lake Sparks. Look at the yellow wildflowers growing right in the water. These things were everywhere. A few brave kayakers went out to slide smoothly through the watery flower beds.

The water is quite cool, but the view makes it inviting. I decided there was nothing for it but to hire a kayak and paddle around for a while.

This delightful gentleman furnished me with a kayak. It turns out he moved here 14 years ago from, of all places, Fresno. It was getting a bit rough for his taste so he decided to seek a different lifestyle elsewhere. I'd say he's hit on a pretty good one.

How would you like to see this view every day? For those of you who know me well, of course I was careful with the camera in the kayak. For those of you who know Bend, that's Mt Bachelor in the background.

One of the biggest benefits of photographing the mountains from the middle of a lake is that it cuts down the number of people standing in front of your camera. As beautiful and isolated as most of these trick photographs appear, unfortunately, almost every spot that I carefully photographed looked at first glance like the image below.

Armed only with a good camera, great patience, and a solemn conviction that human beings are the least attractive thing in the park, I did manage to get a few clean shots.