Postscript: First the Musick, Then the Geisha

There was a bit of a funny story regarding our drive up to the Musick Guard Station, but I haven't quite figured out how to make a real tale of it. Suffice to say that we had the written directions in our car, and they had the pamphlet with the map on it in their car. So we came at the last winding maze of forest service and private access roads from two very different states of understanding. After several stops in the middle of the road to palaver, and more than one doubling back (and tripling forward, if there is in fact such a thing), we did arrive at the intended location, but not until after a mile or so detouring up a secondary road which we later discovered was labeled not only "unmaintained road" but also "not fit for passenger vehicles". Needless to say, on the way out Edward insisted on driving a ways back up this road to see what we could see.

It turned out to be a lovely area surrounding the Geisha Girl mine (the Umpqua is riddled with claims by apparent hobbyist miners, who are shockingly! politically incorrect in their appellations).

We just sorta poked around looking at pretty streams and photographing alien looking fungi while the dogs frolicked in what was a canine heaven (except for the one large truck which trundled slowly by, yet petrified Mabel to the point of inaction. Like, deer-in-the-headlight inaction. Or, my dumb dog stopped in the middle of the road until I physically drag her out of the way of the kindly hobby miner inaction.)

It was quite fun, and presented no obvious harm to our humble passenger vehicle. Win-win!