Tag: Drone

Posted on

A Snowy Holiday

Calm before the storm

It’s been snowing for weeks. Thirty eight inches of snow accumulated outside our door, starting just before Christmas. This made for a lot of shoveling, but also created a beautiful landscape.

We were planning a quick trip to the coast to visit family on Christmas day, but Mother Nature stepped in. A storm front moved onshore Christmas Eve and for the next three days just kept dumping moisture. Central Oregon and the eastside of the Cascades were under travel advisories. Not a great thing over the holidays.

The weather backed off a bit the last few days of 2021. This allowed time to dig out before the next front moved in, dropping an additional 18 inches of snow. All this snow is good news for the depleted reservoirs; however, it made travel a bit treacherous between snow plowings. The passes were shut down and supplies, especially fuel, were limited.

It’s the 8th of January, in a new year. The worst of the local roads have been plowed, rutted road ways cleared. A warm front moved in and created a different kind of mess. For the most part we are staying close to home, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t  making plans for exploration and at the very least a fishing trip or two.

Welcome to 2022! We’re looking forward to a great year, hope you are too.

Posted on

More Rocks

Highway 20 ,,, clean air as far as the eye can see

Two things have happened . . . the air has cleared and daytime temps have dropped. So it is perfect weather to do some rockhounding.

There is no shortage of places to find fossils, minerals and rocks in Central Oregon, but all are nearly void of shade. Any roads near these sites will quickly become impassable with a day or two of rain. That in mind fall is an ideal season.

We’re headed east on US 20 to a dirt road just west of highway marker 77. Glass Butte and Little Glass Butte are six thousand acres open to public collection of a ‘reasonable’ daily amount of obsidian. The state defines reasonable as less than 250 pounds . . . no problem there.

The two low hills look like most of the hight desert landscape between Bend and Burns. A few patches of scrub pine and juniper amid large swaths of sage and rabbit bush.

Drive up the gravel road a few miles and quickly you start to see the glint of black rock scattered between the sage brush. Obsidian is typically black but at the Glass Buttes area you can find red, snowflake, green, and a number of other color combinations. This makes this a popular rockhounding site.

Shards of obsidian … this volcanic glass is hard, brittle and fractures with sharp edges.

We found a spot away from the crowds in the Little Butte area. It didn’t take too long to fill our bucket with marble sized pieces, perfect for the tumbler, and a few larger chunks as well. The material we picked up was mostly black but there are some with red and mahogany streaks. All were picked up off the surface with only minimal digging.

Once back home we rinsed the desert dust, inspected our finds and separated a load to polish in the tumbler. In addition to obsidian, we found some samples of petrified wood.

We’re thumbing through the Oregon Rockhounding book and plan more fall expeditions in the future.
Posted on

Smoke Clogged Days

Sunrise in Christmas Valley

Endless days of ‘unhealthy’ and ‘very unhealthy’ air pushed us to a point where we drove into the belly of the beast, Summer Lake. It’s a few miles north of what was at one point this summer, the nation’s largest wildfire.

Air quality doesn’t seem to matter to the snow geese, sand pipers, American avocet, and stilts who feed across the shallows.

California fires are the major contributor to the choking particulate count but Oregon has added to the plume. Which at last view stretches from left coast across the nation. In all it’s been a bad summer for outside activities.

The one thing poor air quality offers is unique sunrises. So the first stop was Fort Rock to catch the orange globe.

Fort Rock is a great location to watch the progression from dawn to sunrise.

We broke out the drone for some aerial footage.

No obstacles … no wind … perfect flight conditions for this novice drone pilot

The gray haze and lack of wind created some really cool conditions on the water at Summer Lake Wildlife Refuge.

Harshly backlit black-necked stilts stride across a silent expanse of water.

The gray haze and lack of wind created some really cool conditions on the water at Summer Lake Wildlife Refuge.

Birds are starting fall migrations and that was reflected in the variety of species we saw.

 

A pair of coyotes, one roaming, the other hunkered down in a lone patch of grass.

And for the first time we came across a pair of coyotes that appeared to be hunting.

Photos were shot in brief excursions from the cab of our car and the ever-present masks helped.

There is rain in our forecast so that may bring some relief as season weather patterns shift and temperatures cool.