Smoke, smoke, and more smoke

In case you were wondering if the wildfire smoke in the Pacific and Inland Northwest is really as bad as the news outlets are reporting, let me assure you, it is.





These pictures were taken from the eastbound scenic overlook on I-84 between Pendleton and La Grande, looking back toward Pendleton.

The first picture was taken a couple months ago, the second was taken this afternoon from the same spot and looking in the same direction.

On a good clear day you can see Mt. Hood, Mt. Adams, and Mt. Rainier from here (about 150, 150, and 170 miles away as the crow flies).

Today I couldn't even see the valley floor.

Totality

Emma and I just got back from an amazing vacation on Washington's Olympic coast, capped off by an overnight stay in Unity, Oregon, two hours south of La Grande.

Why Unity, a microscopic sagebrush town in the middle of nowhere?



Eclipse.

Oregon has been an eclipse-eclipse-eclipse madhouse for over a year.  So much hype, so much advertising, so many people planning to descend on the state.  Hotels in the path have literally been sold out for a year.

I feel very lucky that this celestial phenomenon happened so close to where I live.  A partial but very nearly complete eclipse would have been visible from my front porch, but I really wanted to see the totality.  I've seen total lunar eclipses several times, but never any sort of solar eclipse.  There have only been four total solar eclipses crossing North America during my lifetime, and none were remotely close to where I was living.

So Emma and I gave up an extra day at the rainforest and beach and trekked home on Saturday, then yesterday went two more hours south to Unity to be in the path of totality.

It wasn't nearly as much of a madhouse as I feared it would be. The campground (which until a couple months ago had been some guy's cow pasture... yes there were booby traps...) wasn't wall-to-wall rowdy people, and we didn't have any traffic at all on the way there.  On the way back, traffic was a little slow for about 20 miles north of Baker City, but that was only because there was construction and the highway was down to one lane.  I was glad that we only had to go as far as La Grande, though.  After we got home, I saw reports of the main highways north into Washington being clogged with stop and go traffic for miles and miles and miles.

As for the eclipse itself, well, it was amazing.  To actually see something like that is just incredible.

I really don't have big enough words to describe that feeling when it started getting darker and darker, and the birds stopped singing.  We watched the moon take a bite out of the sun, and then it was dark and the hazy mist of the corona was flaring out around the darkness of the moon.  I saw Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, and Venus.  I saw a solar prominence, a great gout of plasma erupting into space. Something I wasn't expecting, but which makes total sense, was that the air temperature dropped about 10 degrees during the height of the eclipse.  It was enough of a drop that I put my fleece jacket back on.  The the sun started coming back, and I saw the diamond-ring effect.  Then the birds started chirping again, and it started to warm up, and the moon glided away.

I sat there for the whole thing, from when the first wee little bite went out of the sun at 9:09 until it was completely whole again at 11:46.  For 2 minutes and 6 seconds in the middle, there was totality.

I can't even imagine what an eclipse must have been like to ancient people who didn't know what was going on.  I feel incredibly lucky to have seen it.

2017 Ladd Marsh Bird Festival

Today was the 12th Annual Ladd Marsh Bird Festival.  This is the 11th year that I've been here for it, and I have to say, it's one of the highlights of my year.

It starts off with a music program and guest speaker on Friday night, and this year the speaker was Mark Obmascik, who is a journalist and author of The Big Year.  It was great fun, and when we left we were treated to this amazing sunset.



I was also somewhat more excited than usual, because I made a purchase at the program!  This is new-to-me spotting scope, a Vortex Viper HD. 



I've been saving my pennies for several months to upgrade my scope.  You may remember that last year I was given a Bushnell Spacemaster II scope (I still can't believe that).  While I like that one, I frequently found myself wishing that the optics were a little better, so the image could be a little brighter and a little clearer.

The owner of the local bird shop had this one for sale at the Friday night program.  It has been gently used, and other than a cosmetic scratch on the casing is in perfect condition.  He gave me a good deal, and now it's mine!  The tripod is the one I bought last year, so Yay! I'm set for a while!  I'll probably hang on to the Bushnell, since it's a good scope.  Maybe I can convince Emma to go birding with me.

The Vortex has a larger lens (80 mm vs 60 mm for the Bushnell), so it's much brighter, and has a higher magnification (20-60x vs 15-45x for the Bushnell), though I will say that the image quality and brightness significantly decrease at the higher zoom levels.  This is to be expected with a zoom lens, and happens with both scopes.

I was able to take a couple bird shots with my iPhone 5 through the new scope, and it did well.  This one of a coot on a nest came out the best.  This is taken from about 100 feet away.



I have a hard time lining up the camera with the scope lens properly, and holding the camera steady enough to get a clear picture.  It will take practice, but I also may or may not be ordering a phone-to-scope adapter mount to be able to get clearer images. (Hint: I already did.)



The marsh part of the Bird Festival weekend was great fun, and we saw 67 species of birds in six hours at my station.  That's fewer species than normal, but the water was really high in the marsh this year, and we didn't get the suite of shorebirds that we usually do. My prize for the morning was a wood duck.  They're so fancy!

After lunch, Anne and I went birding on our own around the valley, and added another handful of species to our lists for the day.  My highlights for this part of the day were Western tanagers and a lazuli bunting.  Beautiful!

We drove up and around High Valley Road and a couple side roads, between Cove and Union on the southeast side of the Grande Ronde Valley, which is one of my favorite bird routes.  The views along this drive never fail to take my breath away.



All in all it was a great day.

Stillness

Gearing up for the 12th Annual Ladd Marsh Bird Festival.  I can't wait.

Abalone shell sky

Such a pretty sunset tonight.

Inside and outside

Inside my house, the Gastrochilus somai orchid is blooming!



Each flower is about half an inch tall, and both spikes are covered in flowers.  These have been open for two weeks now, and are so pretty.  I love their sweet lemony fragrance.



Outside my house, things have taken a definite turn toward fall.



The trees are at about peak color right now and I really need to get out and take some whole-tree shots, because wow.  Seems like they are extra bright this year.



Also, this happened on Monday.  First snow on top of Mt Emily, just north of La Grande,



And first snow on the Wallowa Mountains just east of La Grande.



I was out for work today, south of la Grande in the Baker Valley, and took this picture of the stunning Elkhorn Mountains.  They got a lot of snow over the past couple days!



The company car I drove today had beautiful frost on the windows this morning.

Happy 2016!

Happy New Year!   Emma's and my new year got off to a fantastic start with a trip out to Kansas to see my dad, met there by my sister, brother-in-law, and niece.  It was so great to see everyone, and wonderful to watch the cousins playing.

I couldn't find reasonably-priced plane tickets for me and Emma, so we drove.  It was two 11+ hour days of driving each way, but we had plenty of Harry Potter books on CD and it was actually really enjoyable.  We had good weather, which helped immensely, and the traffic wasn't bad except around Denver on the way home.

We stayed overnight in Rawlins, Wyoming on the way out, and man was it cold!  Temps when we left the motel on Dec. 27 were -14 degrees Farenheit!  I haven't been in weather that cold since I was in college in Maine. The hoarfrost was beautiful, but it was awfully shivery pumping gas!



We were treated to a beautiful sunset on the Great Plains on the evening of the second day, somewhere near Goodland, Kansas, documented by Emma out of the back window of the car.  This was the tail end of our outbound journey, only a little over three hours left to my dad's house at this point.  We were very glad to get there and not have to drive for five days!



We had a great visit.  There were Christmas presents and walking in the brisk Kansas wind and reading old family cookbooks and running Dad's model trains and happy shrieks from the basement as the cousins played.  Cooking and going to the movies (Star Wars again!) and sorting through Mom's old kitchen stuff with my sister to divvy up some of the bits and pieces Dad doesn't use anymore.

Emma was delighted that we had snacking-for-dinner on New Year's Eve, which has become a tradition with her and me these past five or six years.  Sis knows all the good cheeses, and introduced me to the wonderment that is cracker plus fig jam plus goat cheese. I am going to have to source some figs next year so I can make a batch of fig jam.

We may have gone a little overboard on the snack spread, but it was all really good!



All too soon it was time to head out for the trek back home.  We were treated to another beautiful sunset, this time with the Rocky Mountains in silhouette as we headed north from Denver.



All in all it was a very uneventful drive, which is a good thing, and I so, so, so enjoyed the extended time with Emma.

I planned ahead and took the day after we got back off from work as well.  This was a good call, because it was wonderful to have a day to decompress after driving all weekend.  I did laundry and said hi to all my plants, and just relaxed.

Oh, and I made jelly!  Here's my first canning project of 2016, some grape jelly.  The batch made seven half pints, but two of the jars went as thank-you gifts to the friends that kept an eye on the cat while we were gone.



As for Coco, I think she was convinced that she had been abandoned forever.  I think this is the longest she's ever been left alone since we adopted her, and she apparently did not like it one bit. According to the kitty sitters, she was yowly and clingy when they came to feed her, and this continued after we got home as well.  She didn't leave me and Emma alone from the moment we walked in the door, and stuck to me all the next day while I was home and Emma was in school.  Tuesday, after I was back at work, she was frantic again when we got home in the afternoon. She seemed very relieved that we hadn't left for a week and a half again.

Even tonight, after almost a week of being home and back to our normal routine, she is still being unusually clingy.  Poor kitty.

Giving thanks

Emma was with her dad for Thanksgiving Day this year, so I was on my own.  I celebrated the holiday by going for a hike and making a pizza when I got home.

I went to one of my favorite places, Catherine Creek State Park, about half an hour from my house.



Over the river and through the woods...



It was a lovely day, about 30 degrees out and no wind.  This is such a pretty half-mile path between the bridges over the creek.



I walked the mile there and back, and wasn't ready to go home, so I walked the other way up to the top of the hill as well.  That's a bit more of an effort, but the woods were so beautiful.

Even though I got out there at 1:00, the days are so short now that the sky was starting to turn sunset colors.  It was fully dark by the time I got home at 4:30.  Less than a month left until we turn the corner into longer days.

I am so grateful that I live in a place where I can just go walk in the woods for a couple hours, enjoy the silence, and breathe the free air.  I didn't see anyone else during the entire three hours I was hiking.

I am grateful that I feel safe.

I am grateful that I have food and water and a roof over my head.

I am grateful that I have a good job, albeit sometimes a frustrating and overwhelming one, that keeps the bills paid and the savings growing while allowing for hobbies and other non-necessities.

Most of all, I am grateful for Emma, who is my joy and is growing into a beautiful young woman.

Day trip to Hells Canyon

Emma and I took a day trip around the loop road over to the Hells Canyon overlook today, to do a little geocaching and just explore.

We've been here before, but not for several years and it's always worth a visit.



This canyon is the deepest river gorge in North America, deeper than the Grand Canyon by about 2,000 feet.  It's astounding.



It was pretty smoky today and visibility wasn't the greatest, but the haze lends its own beauty.



I'd never been down this particular side road farther than the overlook, but there were two more geocaches out there within striking distance for today, so away we went.  The road was rocky but not too bad, and we made it to the McGraw fire lookout.

I didn't take many pictures because I was too busy enjoying Emma's company, but not one single view was less than amazing.

Wallowa Lake day trip

Emma and I went on another adventure today, this time over to Wallowa Lake.  We were originally going to camp there for the entire weekend, but I didn't plan ahead enough and there weren't any campsites left by the time I called, but it worked out better that way.  Upon sober reflection, I realized that I really didn't want to spend the Fourth of July weekend at Wallowa Lake State Park, with all the drunken revelers.

So we went over just for the day, after the main rush of the holiday weekend was over, and had a lovely day.  We had the day use area to ourselves, and cooked hot dogs on sticks, and s'mores, and had a nice little picnic.  Emma built the fire and had a great time.

After lunch, we went on a short hike up the West Fork Wallowa River, and got a geocache on the way back.

Another spectacular view, overlooking Wallowa Falls.



This made the protective mama in me a little nervous:



The wildflowers were very pretty. These are common harebell (Campanula rotundifolia).



And the Lewis' mock-orange (Philadelphus lewisii) was in full bloom.  We smelled this before we saw it, a delicious waft of jasmine scent.



We hiked out by the forest trail, and back by the river.  Emma dunked her head in the water because it was so hot, but then she was cold and she enjoyed the feel of a smooth sun-baked river stone on her cheek.



After the hike, we went down to the beach for a while and had a swim.



The water felt great.



It was getting late, though, and we were tired and hungry.  We headed home, getting a couple geocaches on the way, and stopped off for dinner at the Terminal Gravity Brewery and Pub, in Enterprise.  This is somewhat ironic because I don't drink beer, but they have great food too.

Chicken sandwich for Emma, veggie burger for me.  Yum.  Smiling faces all around.

Black Lake hike

Emma and I went on a little hike yesterday, up to the Anthony Lakes Basin.  La Grande was a sticky, miserable 105° F, so getting up into the relatively cooler mountains sounded like a good idea. Our target was Black Lake, which is only a mile or so from the parking area.

Emma was somewhat reluctant and whiny about hiking, but once we were actually out there she had a blast.



The first stop along the trail was Lilypad Lake.  This is such a pretty spot.



We spent a little while looking at the trout and dragonflies and lilypads and balance-beam logs.



This dragonfly, a pale snaketail (Ophiogomphus severus), was very cooperative for a portrait.





Once we left Lilypad Lake, the trail went uphill for a while, then leveled out as we started to approach Black Lake.  The outflow stream from the lake trickles through a very pretty meadow that was stuffed with these Sierra bog orchids (Platanthera dilatata var. leuchostachys),



and these elephant's head flowers (Pedicularis groenlandica).



We continued along the path, then Emma went around a corner and stopped short.  She backed up a couple steps and bumped into me, and said "Mommmmm!  There's a GOAT!  What do we do?!?"

Sure enough, there was a big female mountain goat on the path about 50 feet up ahead.

We excitedly stepped off the path behind a convenient big tree, and watched to see what she would do, and I grabbed my phone (camera).  She ambled down the path toward us, very curious to see what we were doing.



She stopped about five feet from me (Emma was about 10 feet further back), and just looked at me.



She wasn't aggressive at all, thank goodness, and fairly quickly turned around and went back the way she came, and went up off the path into a jumble of rocks.

I hadn't realized how big a full grown mountain goat is. It was pretty cool to see one up close.  And I'm very proud of Emma for not freaking out.  She's so skittish about bears, wolves, mountain lions, bees, snakes and other assorted wildlife that this felt like a triumph.

After the goat left, we continued on and finally made it to Black Lake and walked part of the way around it.  It's so pretty, and I feel so lucky to live in this area.



We didn't stay long, though, because the mosquitos were draining us dry.



The hike ended up being about three miles by the time we stopped off at Lilypad Lake again on the way back, and walked a little way around Anthony Lake at the head of the trail. Such a fun day!