Lake o’ the Woods

This is another post about lakes. Throughout my life I have vacationed on many lakes, most notably Coeur d’Alene Lake and Priest Lake in Idaho, Lake of the Ozarks and Table Rock Lake in Missouri, the North Shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota, and the Door County peninsula on Lake Michigan in Wisconsin.

But my first lake experiences were on Lake o’ the Woods in Klamath County, Oregon. As I did a little research for this post, I learned that the official name of the lake is “Lake of the Woods.” But my grandmother always called it “Lake o’ the Woods.” Apparently, that was the name that Oliver Applegate gave the lake when he came across it in 1870. Oliver Applegate was part of the Applegate family that settled and developed Oregon starting in 1843. He built a road near the lake he found, then built a cabin on its shore, thus becoming the first resident of Lake of the Woods.

The lake is located near Klamath Falls, Oregon, where my maternal grandparents lived when I was young. They had friends with a cabin on the lake, and when we visited in the summers, we would get to go to the Lake o’ the Woods for a day. This picture of my brother and me was taken outside the cabin we visited in 1960.

I don’t remember much about the visits to the lake, except that it was cooler and prettier than Klamath Falls. The lake was lined with forests and mountains rose above the lakeside hills. My grandparents’ friends had a fishing boat, I think, because I remember going for boat rides. My brother and I couldn’t swim yet in 1960, so there were many warnings about not going too close to the edge of the dock and wearing life jackets. As I recall, the water was very cold, and I didn’t much want to get in it. I preferred to bundle up in my Oregon Ducks sweatshirt.

In about 1962, my grandparents moved to Pacific Grove, California. In 1967, after my grandfather died and my grandmother remarried, she moved back to Klamath Falls. I visited her for a week in the summer of 1969. My step-grandfather’s granddaughter (does that make her my step-cousin?), who was a couple of years younger than me, was there at the same time so we could entertain each other.

Once again, my grandmother took us on a day trip to Lake o’ the Woods. I don’t think we went to the same cabin—I think this time we visited other friends of my grandmother. The lake was just as pretty as I remembered from my visits as a very young child. I could swim by this point, but the water was still too cold to really enjoy it.

By 1969, my family had vacationed on Coeur d’Alene Lake, which was much bigger than Lake o’ the Woods. Coeur d’Alene will always remain the epitome of lake vacations for me. But any mountain lake is a good place to visit. Not quite as good as the ocean, but very good.

What’s the first vacation you ever remember taking?