Cool.... Cool..... Water.

And after a long uphill hike that would be mighty cool water indeed. That's what these monkeys learned recently when their Grandpa took em' by the hands and marched em' up a winding logging road behind our place. In search of cool....cool....
(I mean real cool)... water.

About a mile up, around a few bends in the road, through a tree canopied deer trail,around some poison oak (leaves of three: let it be, leaves of four: look some more or something like that), we finally pop out of the woods onto upper Panther Creek Road. A beautiful view awaited us and the coolness of the woods quickly dissipated as we were warmed by the late afternoon sun.

From there we began our first descent down the road just a piece to this quiet little spring fed pool, and the beginning of the story about how Panther Creek Cottage gets it's abundant cool cool water year round.

An overflow pipe allows the water to flow beneath the road where it cascades down a rocky embankment destined for Panther Creek.

Here ended our basking in the sun as we disappeared once again in to the woods.

Caution: lots of green ahead.

I don't know what this stuff is, but there is lots of it. We liked the tiny spears of white fluff that looked like they were just hovering there over all that green. Remember, lots of green. You want blue? Google Montana. We're in Oregon folks!

The bulk of our water comes from this source. A very marshy open area we came to a little further down the path. Underneath all that vegetation is an abundance of natural spring water.

A rivulet of water emerging from that marshy area

A little ways further we peered down into this hole to see a small stream traveling underground.

All this downward flow and merging increases water volume. By the time it reaches our catch basin the overflow can create quite the ruckus.

During winter storms the top of the basin is nearly hidden beneath the rushing water. A real bummer for the head hillbilly if for some reason he has to maintenance it during heavy winter rains. He has to temporarily divert the water to clean out the basin, and usually comes home cold and very wet.

HH fashioned a crude filter system within the catch basin using a five gallon bucket and wire mesh. The pressure of the cascading water keeps it submerged on it's side at the bottom of the basin. A pipe inserted into the bucket exits out at the bottom of the basin (can you see it?)

From here the pipe travels up hill and holler until it reaches our place.

And now monkeys?

March monkeys, march home!

okay, meander then.