Goose Lake to Susanville

The above picture is how Goose Lake used to look.  Now, you cannot see any water from the campground.  In just the three weeks we have been gone, the lake has receded even more, and the park has stopped watering its lawns and they are browning.   In a short time, it will be dusty.  It is a sight I have never before seen in all the time we have been coming to Goose Lake.  Very sad.  I can only hope that a good wet winter will restore the Lake, and perhaps if we have back-to-back normal winters (instead of the drought they are in), it will again fill up.

This morning we breakfasted at the Dinner Bell in Lakeview, enjoying their WONDERFUL homemade bread, and delicious breakfast dishes.  We then headed out toward Susanville, and explored the town a bit by stopping at the Museum, lunching out at a Mexican restaurant the Good Sam park recommended, and coming back to nap.  We were awakened by sirens all around us as a nearby grass fire was burning toward our camp. After a couple of hours of frantic fire activity, it looks like the grassfire is out.  Thank goodness.

This is a pretty campground, with good showers.  They have downsized a bit by closing the outdoor recreation area and indoor rec room, but the level concrete pull through spaces are wide, with grassy areas around.

Tomorrow we head to the walnut ranch, and Friday I head home to Mendocino.  The trip is over....

John Day Fossil Beds

John Day Fossil Beds National Monument is located in central eastern Oregon, and contains a lengthy and nearly unbroken record of geologic change and animal and plant evolution in North America.  For nearly a century, scientists have revealed fossils of land plants and animals dating back from 44 million to 5 million years ago.  This fossil record also captures evidence of dramatic climatic changes--this is displayed wonderfully in the Paleontology center, a visitor center, in the monument.  Unfortunately, it was a Monday, and the center was closed (sequestration?), so Helen could not see it.  Liz and I have visited before, and were looking forward to a return visit, but that's how it goes.

The monument is very spread out, and I drove Helen about 40 miles from our campsite to the Painted Hills Unit, since we have only one day at the Fossil Beds, and this unit is a "must see."  In its entirety, the Monumen has over 14,000 acres found in 3 widely separated units, the Sheep Rock Unit, Painted Hills Unit, and Clarno Unit, all within the John Day River Basin.  The Basin includes a large agricultural valley, and the river itself is the longest undammed tributary of the Columbia River.
Deep dramatic canyons of basalt, eroding ravines of fossil-bearing sediments, and striking outcrops can be found in the steep mountainous terrain.

The Painted Hills Unit is found by driving down a paved/gravel road to the first in a series of hillsides of deep red and yellows.

The first stop is at the picnic area--a grassy expanse with water and bathrooms, picnic tables, and shady trees.

The next stop is at a group of the painted hills, where a boardwalk leads you on a short walk around the hillocks:

Here you can see the clay-rich soil of these colorful hills are parched and cracked:

As you drive around the unit, you can see the striking colors of this unusual formation:

We easily achieved our pedometer goal of 10000 steps, even though we are still being careful of Helen's knee.

We returned to the picnic area for our lunch of crackers and cheese, then drove back to the town of John Day to do laundry, upload the prior blog at the McDonalds, and eat dinner at the Grubstake (prime rib for me--this is cattle country).

We are staying at the Clyde Halliday State Park, a lovely park with grassy areas around your campsite, plus electricity and water at each campsite.  We dumped at their dump station before setting up camp, so we had empty tanks for the two days we were here, plus the planned day at Goose lake.  The sound of the geese flying overhead  is soothing, and at least forty birds flew over my head in our campsite that morning as I had my coffee.  In the night, I had heard the raucous cries of coyotes--so loud and shrieking as I have never heard before, not even at the walnut ranch.  Neither had Liz heard such a sound--it lasted about 30 seconds and happened about five times.  The next night they were noisy again, but not so loud and screeching.

Tomorrow, we head to Goose Lake, where we are concerned about smoke in the air from the many Oregon lightning fires.  Our first stop is breakfast at the McDonalds, then off we will head.

Banner Creek Idyll

 

The next morning, Liz and I decided to walk up the fishing trail along Banner Creek so I could take pretty pictures.  Suddenly I saw splashing and movement in a pool up the little creek--what was it?  As I got closer, and through my telephoto lens, I saw two three-foot long fish splashing in the shallow water, slipping over a small waterfall to an upper pool and splashing more over there--they looped up-and-down for several minutes while I photographed them.   We continued on, and saw more of the creek until the trail became too difficult, then we turned back and retraced our steps.  As we got to the area where we had seen the spawning salmon (for that is what they were), we saw they were still building the nest and in spawning behavior.  We returned for Helen and took her back to see this wonderful event.

Later, Liz and Helen talked to a ranger that confirmed they were salmon (Chinook) which had traveled up the Columbia River to the Snake River to the Salmon River and to their own little Banner Creek where they had been born.  The following pictures are closeups that I captured when I returned to wade in the creek and creek closer to the pair. 

Aswe sat around later that afternoon, we were visited by several chipmunks, but one ("Jumper" was a particular favorite).  He was unafraid, and checked every inch of my trailer, our chairs (empty and occupied), our clothes, our camp stove, the old camp fire, my ladders--climbing up everything he could to check things out.  He was so fearless, he would climb into your lap if you did not shoo him away.

First he came slowly sneaking up:

Then, he checked us out and decided we were harmless:

The following sequence shows just some of the antics after that:

He checks out Liz' foot:

He decides the foot is pretty good.

If the foot is good, so is the leg and the lap (Liz' as well as Helen's, shown):

An empty chair--where is everybody?

And thias plate--it's empty too!

Maybe there is something under it?

Maybe there is a lot more inside the camper--won't you let me in?

Please let me in?

Maybe I'll just watch from a tree!

After another wonderful night on the creek, we got up early and headed down the mountain, west toward Oregon, and ultimately John Day.to show Helen the Fossil Beds.  That blog will wait until another day... 

Butte Geneaology

We visted the Butte-Silver Bow County Recorder (twice)in the Courthouse--an old building with beautiful marble interior, including pink/reddish marble in pillars and columns on the second floor, where we found birth records  and death certificates for Helen's fathers lineage.  Afterward,  we went to the new Archives hall where early editions of the Butte Miner were kept, and in researching 1910 through 1914, using the info from the Recorder's office, we located news articles of births, deaths, and funerals;  these provided some good information for Helen.  Unfortunately, we didn;t receive one of the key documents we had noted for copying, so the next day (Friday) while traveling to Idaho, we called the Archives.  They remembered us and emailed us the documents!

We drove onward into Idaho, but two of our planned our campgrounds were closed, so we continued on, ultimately ending up back at banner Creek, which was cool and lovely.  We decided to spend two nights at Banner Creek, not going enywhere the next day so we could just enjoy the beauty around us and relax for a day without sightseeing or driving. No cell phone service here, so no blogging till we catch up later.

Early Morning in Hayden Valley, Yellowstone

We left camp at 5:30 on July 23rd to head toward Hayden Valley in hope of hearing/seeing wolves. We decided not to stop along the way, but soon the spectacular beauty caused us to change that decision.  As dawn spread over the steamy hot springs along the highway east of North Basin geysers, the eastern sunrise was too beautiful to ignore.  As we climbed out of our car, we also noted the full moon setting in the west at the same time:

Earlier, in the breaking dawn light, we saw an elk herd grazing by the Madison River just a few miles east from the park entrance:

 

 

Further down the road, we pulled off to see the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, spectacular in the early morning light with hardly anyone else around.

 

A small snow cornice still hangs above the river--it was 30 degrees here this morning!

 



A little scamp of a chipmunk was our only other companion at the first pulloff:

We continued to travel south, and soon began to encounter the ubiquitous bison.  One older bull bison travelled down the center of the oncoming lane, stopping all traffic behind him, as he slowly marched up the road, totally oblivious to a string of cars behind him. He passed by our stopped car within four feet, and was snorting with every other step.  We drove on, seeing several bulls along the highway, and finally, a large herd blocked the road and extended on both sides up to the hill tops:

We stopped whenever we saw cars pulled over, and usually thought they were watching distant bison, but one woman came over to us just as we almost left and asked if we had spotted the grizzly.  We
had not, but thanks to her, we did.  He was far away, moving quickly, and my telephoto caught him, but only just:

Two other times we stopped for supposedly grizzly sightings, all very distant.  When I zoomed in on one of those "sightings" later on my laptop, it was a distant bison.  The grizzly tends to move much more rapidly than the bison, and we watched the one pictured above emerge from a group of trees and quickly zig-zag his way up the hill until he disappeared.  I could tell at the time that his shape was definitely not that of a bison, and his movements were very rapid.

Further down the road, we breakfasted on eggs benedict at the Yellowstone Lake Lodge, which had a beautiful overlook of this large mountain lake:

We had given up hope of seeing a moose, but I was looking for a strong cell signal when we came up to the west Thumb Geyser area, and suddenly, there they were--two moose cows at the entrance to the West Thumb Geyser area, blocking all of the traffic in both directions.  It wasn't easy to catch them with the camera, as they were upset by the traffic, and walking off quickly, trying to avoid tourists snapping their picture.  One of the cows was calling her high pitched whistle, obviously distressed by all of the hubbub, but still beautiful, although this second view of her showing her moose withers and roman nose is from the rear.

Tomorrow we head out toward Butte Montana. We tried to extend our stay here, but I would have to hitch-up and move to another spot, and I would just as soon move on, then.

Old Faithful and Points In Between

We headed out early--This juvenile was all by himself on the opposite side of the Madison River from a much larger elk herd in a grassy meadow along the Madison:

We also saw more bison along the road--bison seem to be everywhere, and usually are on or next to the roads.  Today (the 22nd) we had decided to leave about seven and head directly to Old Faithful to beat the crowds.  That strategy worked well, because by 10:00, it was hard to find a parking space at any scenic spot.  It also worked well for spotting wildlife, such as that shown above, as well as two Sandhill cranes:

At Old Faithful, we learned that it was first-come-first served for the historic Inn luncheon, and so we planned to watch the geyser erupt, then explore back north along the section of the Lower Loop highway.

The above picture of old Faithful is before it erupts.  I took a video of a portion of the eruption, then decided to just watch it and enjoy the view.  There were few people seated on the benches (three in a row) encircling the geyser but by our return after lunch (about 1:00), there were so many people you could not SEE the benches because of the standing crowds.  We still had a good view of the Geyser from the visitor center at the 1:00 eruption, as long as someone did not step in between us and the Geyser...

After the morning eruption, we left old Faithful, and drove to Black Sand Basin, where the first of several extraordinary boardwalk trails took us up close and personal to more geysers, bubbling pools, and deep blue springs, and other colors of the geothermal spectra.  Next we went to Biscuit Basin, and all of the basins northward.  On all of our walks, we saw most people wearing suitable walking/hiking shoes, but there was an occasional person who should have known better.  The young lady in these seemed to be struggling on the Boardwalk:

 

The following pictures are only some of the hundreds I took, each one equally awe inspiring.

 

 

 

 

Tomorrow is another early day (earliest yet) to drive to the Haydon Valley to look for wolves.  Then we will complete the Lower loop, passing by Yellowstone lake, and again past Old Faithful and back to camp for our last evening here.