Clear Lake Resort - Sisters, OR
Back in July, Audrey and I visited Clear Lake which is located deep in the Willamette National Forest in Midwestern Oregon for a day of kayaking on the jade colored waters.
While there, we noticed the cabins for rent that were part of the Clear Lake Resort and we agreed right then and there to go back in the near future to spend a night or two. Fast forward a couple of months and my mother-in-law Rachel moved to Oregon to be closer to Audrey. After she got settled in, Audrey and I agreed that taking her mother to Clear Lake would be a great excuse to go again.
The site to reserve a cabin at the resort is a little bit outdated, there are no pictures of the cabins’ interiors or even a description of each cabin upon selection. The only description of the cabins is on a different page so you’ll have to have it open in a separate tab or you’ll have to just remember which cabin seemed the best for your needs.
The booking page states that guests can bring up to two pets and you have to pay an extra $12 per pet per night however there seems to be no real way for the resort to enforce it nor do any of the people working there actually seem to care if you had brought pets since so many people seem to bring theirs. It appears that the process relies mostly on the honor system.
Clear Lake is located in the heart of of the Willamette National Forest, a straight shot East from Eugene about an hour and a half drive on Highway 126.
Parking is a bit limited and there are no reserved spots for people renting cabins. Even the “spill-over” lot fills up rather quickly so make sure to get there early in order to find a spot close to the cabins. The caveat however is that check-in time is not until 3:00 PM so arriving early does mean you won’t be able to technically enter your cabin however we found that the friendly staff at the resort were more than happy to let us enter our cabin once it was ready shortly after we arrived at noon.
Each cabin has a keypad in lieu of a physical key, the combination being the last four digits of your reservation number. The keypads are a surprisingly nice modern touch that I certainly didn’t expect at a camping resort.
We rented out Double Rustic Cabin #7 for $80/night. This cabin came equipped with a gas powered heater and stove that helped keep room nice and toasty throughout the night even when temperatures dropped into the low 40s outside.
The website claims that the studio style room can house four people between the bed and the small loft but could easily hold five as the couch is more than large enough for someone to sleep on. The queen sized mattress on the ground floor was certainly comfortable but the mattress in the loft was more of a mat about three or four inches thick. Not exactly the best thing for a good night’s sleep.
No sheets or other bedding are provided at the resort so you have to bring that yourself which does help to make the place feel a little bit more like home.
The “rustic cabins” don’t have any indoor plumbing and the bathrooms and showers are located in a building up a hill directly behind he cabin. A few tokens are provided in the room in order to operate the coin-slot showers. Although we were told that the generators that power the resort are shut off at 10 PM during the “winter months” which we were considered to be in, the power never went out all night.
The Clear Lake Resort has a small restaurant that it operates for several months out of the year, but shuts down once the temperatures begin to drop. Since the beginning of the COVID pandemic however the restaurant has been closed indefinitely due to safety precautions as well as lower staffing numbers.
