Sam, My nephew ( Brian ) and I went up to Deep Creek yesterday ( 8-18 ) and the Bowen Ranch road is no problem. There are some ruts from last Sunday's storm, but nothing to worry about. We were checking out some spots on Deep Creek, using our swim mask to see what kind of fish are in the creek right now, and then around 1PM we hiked along the creek to DCHS, where we spent the rest of the day. The creek temps upstream from DCHS, about a mile or so, are running very cool for the middle of August, and the flow is the strongest I have seen ever for this time of year. The water is a bit cloudy too, maybe a bit dirty from the recent storm downpours. Down at DCHS, the Lagoon was great, being warmed up by the hotwater flows that flow into it. Brian and I used our mask to check out the whole Lagoon for fish life. There are some groups of small Chubs beginning to make a come back from the floods, but we did not see a single Catfish, in any pools that we check out on Deep Creek. I'm wondering if the big floods killed them all off. Brian found a pair of sunglasses at the bottom of the Lagoon, and I found a very usable dive mask, that actually works much better than my current one, finders keepers :-) Anyway the shower down at DCHS is still working great. It was off when we got there. I turned the valve half way to get it going a bit, but the water coming out of the Aniversary Pool is still quite hot, hitting you from the shower. Things were pretty clean around the springs. Brian did some jumps into the Womb, from the high rock that juts up above it on the north side. It was his first time to DCHS and he had a great time. When we left we hiked back upstream, and through the Indian Camp, where I showed him the grinding holes up there. We also saw a couple of Horned Toads along the trail. There were even some little baby toads down along the creek. I had my faithful pooches eat them all up, could be those dang Arroyo Toads, somehow we have to keep them in check :-) It was another, wonderful day in paradise, and as usual, leaving that great place, never comes easy :-)
