We were six miles up the dustiest, ruttiest, rockiest, and, for the last mile, thinnest, gravel road I could remember, when the blasted thing petered out to nothing. One second sketchy road, the next a dense wall of fir trees with no lake in sight.

That’s when 8-year-old Danny looked over at me from the passenger side, smiled, and brightly said, ”Where’s Map Guy when you need him?”

”Good thing he stayed home or we’d probably be lost,” I spat, not quite so brightly.

Kids.

After consulting the proper charts, it didn’t take a Map Guy to tell me that I’d made a wrong turn in our quest for Irish and Taylor lakes, and ended up a half-mile (through impenetrable forest primeval) from Lemish Lake.

We turned around, bumped, bounced and ground back over that brutal dirt road and eventually found the error of our ways down around Little Cultus Lake. The fun had just begun.

Because the road to Irish and Taylor lakes is worse.

You’ll need a high-clearance vehicle to negotiate the 4636 Road. But it’s all worth it when you reach these two gorgeous lakes up by the ridge of the Cascades and the Pacific Crest Trail. Taylor Lake is the first one you come to, on the south side of the road; Irish Lake is on the north, and the PCT skirts its west shore.

Both lakes have the requisite conifer-studded shores and gin-clear water. Irish boasts a big island that got our Tom Sawyer blood boiling. ”Wouldn’t it be cool to canoe out there and camp?” ”Wonder if there’s any wildlife out there?” We planned a trip right then and there that involves a boat, lounge chairs, steaks and a big cooler full of beverages.

If it’s hiking you want, hop on the PCT heading north and you’ll be in mountain lake heaven. Look at the Forest Service map and you’ll discover that the area is thick with little lakes, most with at least some sort of population of scrappy little mountain trout.

Both Irish and Taylor are fishable and good for a cooling soak.

We admired both lakes, cooled off in Irish Lake, ate a snack while admiring some more, but left the fishing rods sheathed in the back of the Jeep. Nothing much doing in the mid-day heat.

If you get in the water, don’t mind the leeches too much. The small, greenish-black, wormlike creatures are found in just about every body of water hereabouts. We adults got into a conversation about the little blood-sucking creatures and the kids got a little freaked out.

I promised I’d check it out. Here’s the story. Yes, they are nature’s little vampires. And yes, a few may attach to your skin if you swim in a lake in the Central Oregon Cascades (you can pick them off). But, no, leeches don’t normally pose a health problem.

”They are relatively harmless,” said Ted Wise, a fisheries biologist with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. ”They’re very prevalent around most of our lakes. We’re not aware of any health risks.”

Leeches are, however, a rich food source for the trout in these high lakes, Wise said.

Wise and his ODFW colleagues planted 3,000 cutthroat trout fingerlings in Irish Lake and 3,000 brook trout in Taylor Lake earlier this year. The little trout are up to the challenge of a harsh high-mountain winter, said Wise, so the recent stocking bodes well for future summers.

A drive to Irish and Taylor lakes (without the unnecessary detour) is a good way to wile away a summer day. It’s all the more pleasing when you stop to think that in a couple short months, snow will block your passage for another season.