Going Rogue on the Rogue River

Going Rogue

I was doing a tour of Oregon and I wanted to go through the Rogue River, which is a major source of salmon and steelhead fishing, but of course is also very popular with folks wanting to go rafting and kayaking.  I saw that there was a trip to sail up the ‘Wild & Scenic’ Rogue River, where I could just lean back, enjoy the sun, water, see some wildlife and just chillax for the day.   I had a long day of hiking around and walking scheduled later because I was heading to Crater Lake shortly after, so this was to just chill for a few hours and get a tan, while I tried to rest up a little.  I thought I was going to relax and sleep, but thankfully that didn’t happen, because I what I ended up doing was JET BOATING up the Rogue River. You can’t sleep if you’re jet boating, trust me.

Jet boating is when you use a high powered, slightly wider speedboat that holds a small group of people to quickly cut through and navigate a body of water, that being the Rogue River. It’s great for being able to go east to west and back, pretty fast and can easily handle the current of the river, however, take a lot of skill to do so.  The river has 5 classes of difficulty, so it can get rough out there but the river never goes go from riffles (easy) to rapids (hard) suddenly so there will be no huge scares out there. We elected to use Jerry’s Rogue Jets and  embarked from a point at Gold Beach, Oregon,  The “wild” part of the Rogue River is a 34 mile stretch of the river that is an area only accessible by human’s who are hiking,  jet boating like I did, and of course rafting or kayaking.  The “WILD” part of that is what drew my attention, but there was no other group that will let you go out to this section of the Rogue River with this kind of boat, so Jerry’s it was.  My next trip, hopefully in the coming weeks, will be with Rogue River Journeys and I’ll be rafting it. Jerry’s Rogue Jets, however, are a collection of jet boats and some old “mail-boats”, which are old forms of boats that actually STILL to deliver mail, to this day, for Agnes, Oregon.  There are different destinations that you can pay for, but I would suggest that you do the 104-mile trip, which brings you to the “Wilderness Whitewater” section, you’ll thank me later!  The great scenery out there.

This was definitely a trip to bring that zoom lens, or your binoculars if you’re thinking about doing this because there is definitely going to be something to see somewhere!  I got pretty lazy because I was enjoying the ride and my company, while relaxing, but I did manage to take pics here and there. 🙂  You’ll definitely need something to zoom if you are hoping to view any of the birds perched up high like Ospreys and Eagles. I had a lens up to 200mm and STILL couldn’t get those Ospreys clear enough. They were HIGH up.

I saw seals there but that’s likely because of all the salmon that exist in Gold Beach. Seals and Sea Lions are going silly on the population of Salmon in the Columbia River right now, they have to create salmon hatcheries due to this and birds flooding that area for salmon. Seal hunting might have to become legal, like dear hunting, because they’re getting out of hand!  Or some sharks will make their way this way one day.

Saw many deer on the shores

and of course, the wildest animals, Humans! lol

As always, the finished products can be found on the main site of www.drunkphotography.com.