Gems, Birds and Adventure

This week Waddles and I took a little adventure to south central Oregon.    This was our first trip since the 'lift' was done.   A friend and I planned this trip to Lake Abert, near Lakeview, to do some birding.   Phalaropes migrate through this area in very large numbers, and though this is not the peak migration season, there are supposed to be thousands to be seen.

I left home on Monday and drove down Hwy 97 to the Hwy31 cut-off to Lakeview.  It has been many many years since I drove this cut-off and there are some very cool geologic features to visit along the way.    The first is Hole-in-the-Ground, a volcanic crater that is big and a bit off the beaten path.

I missed the not-so-well-marked turn off, but did a u-turn (yes, with Waddles attached) and went back to it.  It was a gravel/dirt road that was pretty bumpy so driving was very slow.    I didn't have a great map, or directions to find this place but did have a GPS for Geocaching, and there is an Earth Geocache at Hole-in-the-Ground, so I could tell if I was getting close although this GPS judges distance as the crow flies, not by following roads.

It felt like I drove for a very long way, but I was probably averaging about 5 MPH, so I'm sure it was not nearly as far as it felt.   I finally got to the crater, and drove up to the rim.

Looking across the crater to the east

I checked the Earth Cache to see what I had to do to qualify for the cache, and it required me to drive around to the other side of the crater.   The road looked like it could be a bit tough, but I figured I'd give it a go.

on the east rim, with Fort Rock in the background

We made it to the other side, without much trouble, just had to go slow and avoid rocks in the roadway.

Just a bit of the drive...

Rather than turn around and go back, it looked like I could continue around and exit on a different road than I came in on, and it was a bit shorter.    It turned out that this route, though shorter, had some very rough spots, and I had to maneuver Waddles (and the car) between big rocks that were too large to straddle.    We made it without any damage and it felt pretty good to successfully do some off-the-pavement exploring.

The next stop was another wonderful geographic feature, Fort Rock.   I've been here about 4 times before and it is an amazing place.     There is a little town with preserved OLD buildings that are lovely.

The Town

The Rock

From there we headed south, back to Hwy31, through the town of Paisley and on to the junction of Hwy 31 and Hwy 395.    This drive follows a series of lake basins, Silver Lake, Summer Lake and more, with varying amounts of water.    This time of year everything is quite green, but I know it can get hot and dry in the summer, and very cold and snowy in the winter.

I arrived at the little Basecamp RV park outside Lakeview and got settled in.   My friend was staying next door at the Hunters Hotsprings Resort.    She arrived shortly after I did and we headed into Lakeview for dinner.     Lakeview is a small place, and seems to be pretty economically challenged.   We struggled to find a place to eat, and ended up at a nice Mexican restaurant and ate good food and planned our next-days activities.

I was in good company the first night!  I do think Waddles is much cuter however.

Tuesday we got on the road by 8am and headed north to Lake Abert to look for birds.    It was a beautiful day and we saw LOTS of gulls, avocets and horned grebes; LOTS of them.    We stopped at most of the pull-outs along the lake and eventually we got to a spot with hundreds of Wilson's Phalaropes.   These are such fun birds.   They swim in circles stirring up the bottom to find food.   This behavior makes them easy to spot!

Phalaropes!

I know, they are hard to see, but click on the picture to embiggen!  There were probably 1000 in the area.  No way I could take a picture of all of them.

We continued north to our next adventure which was finding Sunstones, the State Gem of Oregon.  BLM has a site where the public can hunt for these stones, in an area surrounded by private mining claims, and it is a long way out there, on dusty dirt roads.   We had good driving directions and eventually found it.

We ate our lunch and then commenced to wander the area picking up lots of very small sunstones.   It was fun and there were a few other people there, some camped, some just for a short day visit like us.

My haul, they are all very small, but very pretty and sparkly.

From there was headed to the town of Plush, which this time if year is quite (p)lush, but is a harsh place other times of the year.   There were places for sale, including the store, but we took a pass!   We did buy something cold to drink and then continued to the even smaller town of Adel.   From there we took Hwy 140 back to Hwy 395, which was a beautiful drive along Camas Creek.

We headed back into Lakeview to see what we could find for dinner.   We had seen a Pizza place the night before so decided to try that.  Well, it turns out the crew hadn't shown up yet, so they were not able to prepare food for at least an hour, so we opted out.  Then we tried another place, which turned out to be closed.   We ended up back at the same Mexican restaurant we ate at the night before.    As we were leaving we asked some young people, who had been in there eating also, if they could recommend other places in town and they gave us a few more options!

On Wednesday we decided to drive south around the west side of Goose Lake.  This turned out to be a great drive.  Dirt road, no traffic, a dike across the southern end of the lake and lots on interesting birds.   We ate lunch in Altures California and then drove up Hwy 395, stopping at Goose Lake State Recreation Area.  Then we drove back up to Lake Abert to check out another RV park and Chandler State Wayside.  During the day we saw gangs of Mountain Bluebirds, Northern Shrikes (one eating a mouse), Turkey Vultures, a Bald Eagle, a Golden Eagle nest with fledglings in it.   We saw White Pelicans, Franklin's Gulls, Rock Wrens, Marsh Wrens, Cedar Waxwings, Pelicans, lots of Ibis.   I didn't write them down, so I know I'm not remembering them all.   We also tried to capture the incredible lichen on the rocks that are Abert Rim, with the afternoon sun on them.

Abert Rim

Avocets, only a few of the MANY we saw

Canada Geese families fleeing the shore when we got out of the car 

(we were a long way away)

Franklin's Gull

Beautiful colors of Lake Abert.

Orange lichen, blue water, orange reflections, green sage, blue sky

We ate dinner at the Tall Town Cafe which was a good choice.   They served enough food for at least 2 meals, maybe more. I'm still working on mine!    Then we explored Lakeview and drove a little way up Bullard Canyon which afforded a lovely view back into Lakeview.

Looking west over Lakeview

Then it was time to call it a day and prepare for the trip home.

I drove home the same way I drove down.  I don't like to do that, but there are not a lot of through roads without going a long way out of my way.     I left early and had lots of time to stop along the way to read interpretive signs and find a number of geocaches.

Its good to be home.  I've washed a lot of dust off both waddles and the car, and we are ready for our next adventure.