Oregon to Washington

Hello everyone. I'm in a library in Packwood, Washington. That's right next to Mt. Rainier. It's been rainy on and off today and last Friday , that was the it rained quite hard for a while. Believe it or not, that was the first rain I've seen since early May. Even that wasn't enough to be an inconvenience. The last time I had any serious rain was back in February! I guess I'm about due. And this is Western Washington. It's supposed to rain a lot here. The temperatures have been quite a bit cooler too. I now wear a sweatshirt most of the time and I've stowed my sandals under the sofa. I'm getting ready for the cooler part of my trip. I believe I'm about half way through now too.


I spent a lot of time on the Oregon coast. There are a lot of interesting and beautiful places along this coast like the California coast.

I found some good places for tide pooling.


And I even saw some whales.



At one spot I found a crew working on a commercial for Campbell's Soup. The guy in the chef's hat gets hit by a wave and comes up with the idea of using sea salt in the soup. Watch for it soon on a TV near you.

After the coast I went to the Columbia Gorge. The building in this photo is called Vista House. It was built basically to attract tourists. I got lucky and caught it with a rainbow.

The area is also known for it's waterfalls.

Then I moved on to the Mt. St Helen area. The major eruption happened in May of 1980. It was fascinating to see how much destruction and the many ways it's starting to come back. The also have some very nice facilities there to tell you all about what happened.

The area right next to the mountain was pretty much blown away by the blast and the landslide that came with it.

Further out you can see trees laying down parallel to each other pointing away from the mountain. Beyond is a zone of standing trees that were killed by the heat of the blast.

Spirit Lake was right in the path of the side of the mountain that slide down. They're calling it the largest landslide in recorded history. When it hit the lake it created a huge wave that splashed up on the opposite shore washing the flattened trees back into the water. You can see a lot of the trees still floating in the lake.

It's amazing how much life is coming back even in the most devastated areas.

I found this waterfall between St. Helen and Rainier. I haven't had a lot of time for photos right here yet but I'm sure you'll see plenty in my next post.

I'm feeling pretty tired, burned out and lonely lately. Pray that I can get my enthusiasm back soon. Maybe I need a vacation from my vacation. What does one do on a vacation from a vacation? Maybe I'll have to spend a day reading or something. It also helps to here from you. Got time for a comment or an e-mail? Also pray that this upcoming holiday doesn't cramp my style too much. Coming on a Wednesday, it cold effect two weekends.

Thanks for looking and praying.

Steve

On to Oregon

In case you don't already know, Out here "Oregon" does does NOT rhyme with "on". Oregonians pronounce it like "Oreg'n". It's just like "Michigan" doesn't rhyme with "an". Anyway... Here I am in Roseburg, Oreg'n. Ive done a lot since my last post to this will be a big one.

Here's the Golden Gate Bridge just before I crossed it to meet up with Chad in Point Reyes National Seashore.

This California Quail sat nicely for me at the visitor center at Point Reyes. I guess he was used to seeing people.

Birding was a bit slow that day. I met Chad and his Son, Nephew, and Father In law in the little town of Reyes Station and we went from there. We got a bit of a late start and the migration is really pretty much past by now anyway. We saw a few birds and it was good to see Chad and meet some of his family. Not a bad day in spite of the fact that Chad failed miserably at producing a Tricolored Blackbird for me. Don't worry Chad, I forgive you, and I did find one later on near the refuge your book suggested. Check that one off my list.

It was good to get out of the Bay area. Nice as it is, it's expensive. I'm not used to paying $25 for a night of camping. In the mountains near Willows CA I found a free campground that I had all to myself except for some Elk in the field nearby and a Coyote that walked through in the morning. My kind of camping!

From there I started heading for the Redwoods but I got distracted by a sign for the Lassen Volcanic National Park. I decided to see what that was all about. It was interesting but I would suggest going after June. As you can see they still had a lot of snow there and many of the trails were still closed.

I found some free camping near there too, along a forest service road that apparently doubled as a cross-country ski trail in the winter. The sign I'm pointing at marks the ski trail. I figure it's around 18 to 20 feet up. They get a lot of snow there! Up in the park they were lamenting the fact that they only got around 14 feet this past winter. The year before they had 33 feet! They said they sometimes don't open the road through the park until July!

I had to add this shot of another free campsite I found. You can just make out the beautiful clear rushing stream in the background. I even had a picnic table and a couple porta-jons a short walk away. This has to be on of my all time favorite campsites.

Redwood National Park was beautiful but a bit of a challenge to photograph. How do you make these big trees really look big? Also, aside from one morning of fog, it was sunny there. That makes it difficult to photograph in the forest.

They have quite a few Elk there too.

And I had to include this photo of a Banana Slug. The Pacific Northwest is known for them. I don't know how big they get but I'm sure it's over six inches!

From here it was on to Crater Lake National Park in Oregon. Quite a place, but I ran into some of the same problems I had before with snow. Only about a quarter of the road around the crater was open. Fortunately the open section had some of the best view points.

This might not be a work of art but it does show something very interesting. First of all, don't let the color fool you, this is water not sky. I took it from the rim of the crater looking down. This is what's known as the "Old Man of Crater Lake". It's a log about 30 feet long and two feet in diameter floating vertically in the water and sticking up out of the water by about four feet. The really amazing thing is that it's been floating around like this since 1896! I'm getting my information from a less than official website so you might want to look up the details for yourself before you go quoting me. But I don't think I'm far off. So why doesn't it sink or rot? Why is it floating in that weird position? I just don't know.

I left Crater Lake expecting to drive straight for the coast. I started out doing just that but I saw a sign for a waterfall so I had to stop. Then I was another sign and another and another... It turns out that the road is part of a scenic drive and there are beautiful rivers, streams and falls everywhere. I thought it would take me an afternoon to get to the coast, but it looks like it will be most of three days instead. This area is gorgeous!

At just about every waterfall I stopped at I saw Dippers. This one is getting ready to bring that mouthful of morsels to its young in the nest just over its head. You can see the water rushing all around it. That's where Dippers like to nest. A lot of times the bird can't get to the nest without getting wet. That doesn't mean much to them though since they feed in rushing rivers. You can watch them hop around on the rocks and then suddenly they disappear under the water. Amazing!

I found this thing amazing too. It's a Redwood Stave Pipe; part of a pipeline carrying water from a reservoir to a power plant. It's about ten feet high and it appears to be put together like a wine barrel. It seems to be pretty old, but aside from a few leaks it seems to be holding together.

I think it's a little bit like a company having too much business, a nice problem to have, but it has been frustrating for me with all these things to photograph. If I find them when the light isn't good, what do I do? Wait for good light? Come back later? Just shoot anyway? I've done a little of each so far but even if I had good light all the time I wouldn't be able to stop for every photograph I see. I've had to put blinders on quite a bit. If I didn't I might never get out of this county! I can only do what I can do, and I've got to leave time for rest. That's harder now too with the amount of daylight we've been having.

Don't worry Mom I'll be fine.

I occurs to me that I haven't given a church report in a while. It's not that I haven't been going, I just haven't been reporting. When I was at Roy's I went to the Christian Church of North Hollywood. That was really just nice. Good music and a nice family feeling to it. The next week I went to Twin Lakes Church near Santa Cruz. That was a great church. Wonderful music and a great message. If I lived in the area I would be going there. Last Sunday I went to Calvary Chapel of the Redwoods. Very nice for a small church. None of these churches had anything for me to plug into as a single on that particular Sunday, but I'm still open to that. We'll see what next week brings.

I've done something I don't like to do. I've spent a lot of money and I've set a deadline for myself. I book a place for myself on an Alaska Marine Highway ferry from Bellingham, Washington to Haines, Alaska. I'm leaving on Friday, July 13th and arriving on the following Monday. It will give me a break from driving and I'm told that the trip is quite an experience. Even if it does turn out to be a bummer it will only be about three days. I'm pretty excited about it.

I guess that was a long post. I better get going now. Thank for looking and for praying.

Steve

Heading North

I did finally get into the main camp I worked at. It had changed a lot. The new owners have put a lot of money into it, and the place was crawling with people, so it didn't spark so many memories for me.


I got this shot at Deep Creek as approached from the "main camp". It had changed quite a bit but not so much that I couldn't recognise it. It just had far fewer trees. Almost all the trees in this photo are less that 20 years old so they wouldn't have been there when I was. It's amazing how much difference that makes.


This is the work of Acorn Woodpeckers. A group of them will fill a tree with all these little holes and them stuff acorns in them to eat later.


That night I camped out along a forest service road near the camp. A fire had gone through there a couple years ago so there were a lot of dead trees and young vegetation like these ferns...


and these Iris'.


It wasn't really a beautiful site but it did give me a nice view of the sunset.


From there I went to Roy's. I didn't do a lot of photography there but we did do some snorkeling, kayaking and fishing. One afternoon I set up my camper just to show Roy and it turned into sort of a neighborhood event! Roy called his neighbor over and then his kids showed up and some people passing by... Even Roy's next door neighbor, who has a part on the TV show "Numbers", stopped by. He's a real nice guy. Roy called him Ali but that's not his full name. He's a bald black guy. Have you seen him? I'm not sure I've ever see the show myself.


The kids loved the camper. I think they were in it more than an hour. Here Roy is holding on to His Daughter Lilly who is having fun with his neighbors kids Jack and Madison. I think the knee next to Roy belongs to his wife Claudia. She came out with a fresh diaper for Lilly. I never thought I would have someone change a diaper in my camper. I guess you never know. She was 8.999 months pregnant at the time so by now they could be the parents of two. Roy better hurry with that new kids room.


I went up the coast from there. Aside from a little detour here or there I stayed right on the PCH. That's the Pacific Coast Highway. I found a lot of sea animals like these harbor seals...


And these Elephant Seals. These are all female and maybe some young males. They shed a layer of skin this time of year and that makes them very sensitive to cold so they have to get out of the water.

Flippers are great for swimming but bad for wiping your nose.


By the time I got to where the big males were the good light was gone so I didn't get many shots of them. This shot does show a male with his big floppy nose.


There aren't a lot of cheap places to camp along the PCH, but some of the parks are beautiful. This was taken at Limekiln State Park.


I think they call this Limekiln Falls.


They are currently trying to reestablish California Condors in six areas around the Southwest. One of those is near Big Sur along the PCH. The vast majority of the birds in the wild today were captive bred. Here however, they had three birds hatch successfully in the wild. They have a long way to go but that's a start. At this spot I saw these three, and three others, at one time!




These two shots were taken just north of Big Sur.



This scene is from Pinnacles National Monument. It's another spot for Condors.

I'm at a Panera Bread in San Jose. After this I'm going to head up to San Rafael to stop in on Chad. He's the guy who bought me the 500th bird pin down in Texas. We're going to try to get out and do some birding. He Promised me a Tricolored Blackbird. Didn't you Chad? OK, you can't really make promises when it comes to birds but a Tricolored Blackbird would be nice.

After that I plan to get moving on up north. I want to have plenty of time to explore in Oregon and Washington before I go on to Alaska.

Thanks for looking and thanks for your comments. It's good to know that I haven't been forgotten. Until next time...

Steve