We headed back up to the Crooked River this week. We lucked out and found our favorite campground . . . completely empty.
That’s unusual this time of year.But as they say, “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”
A bee, between jobs
For now, mornings remain almost cold. All too soon summer’s sun will beat back the chill.
For the present, we set up chairs along the river and settled in to enjoy our good fortune.
It’s important to find the right spot
Fishing was good, I brought a few to the net. The willows nearly overpower the rivers edge, making it difficult for Tip to keep an eye on me or get a drink.
Checkered White Butterfly floats among flowering wildflowers
An abundance of butterflies danced across theleaves in the still lush riparian.
An Osprey surveys it’s surroundings from a very high perch.
Around noon we moved downstream to a new piece of shade and a different stretch of river. At this spot we found the kestrel’s tree occupied by an Osprey.
A lack of defensive efforts (on the kestrels part) suggested the brood has moved on. The osprey seems content in getting his perch back.
Eurasian-collared Dove
It’s already the second week in July, and summer is slipping away. We’ve not had to endure wildfire smoke . . . yet.
So these peaceful excursions are treasured times.
A shaded vantage point to keep track of everyone
All too soon the dog days of August will require more careful planning on where we might find patches of shade. We do have a few places in mind.
To a rockhound a cut bank rising from a road’s borrow pit draws attention. You might see a wall of stone, a tumble of gravel, or you may not even notice.
Rock pickers see these as a window tothe past. The road builder has conveniently opened a portal into local geology.
Sedementary rock layers sitting exposed in a road cut
An important aspect of finding fossils and unearthing minerals is understanding time from ageological prospective.
Sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic are the three major rock groups. Knowing which type you’re looking at helps one understand what could possibly get chipped out.
Ochoco divide still recovering from wildfire
Understanding how the earth was formed is knowing a measure of geological time . . . literally millions of years.
This week’s trek took us to a road cut on the crest of the Ochoco divide. There we split apart sedimentary rock layers in search of leaf and twig fossils.
This high up and still in spring colors
On the geological time line these layers are young, less than fifty million years old and likely encased in mud and sediment on an ancient lake bed.
Volcanic activity pushed these rocks up to form mountains, only to be exposed by a dozer cutting out a logging road.
Leaf fossil
Leaf fossils are one of the few types we’re allowed to collect . . . dig up some bones and authorities want to know about that.
But plant material is fair game.However, it’s not easy work. It’s a fragile dig. You need to carefully split layers of rock to reveal the fossil.
Most plant fossils are from impression fossilization. Layers of sediment and soil bury the plant material leaving an impression or copy showing a leaf in rather fine detail.
However, there aretimes when the plant material gets replaced with minerals and you get a cast fossil.
Often casts are with limbs or twigs and the mineral replacing the plant structure so that rather than a simple ‘image’ you have a physical copy . . . in rock.
Twig fossils
We picked through tailings and chipped away at rock faces long enough to get some representative examples.
There was no need to fill buckets with rock bound fossils. The goal is to explore some different places . . . well, and have a picnic in the wilds.
This is likely the end of warm days and cool mornings.
Pretty soon we’ll have to seek shade before noon. For now, soaking in some solar energy is a pleasant respite.
There were two trips to the Crooked this week.
This weather brings out Mayflies, as well as mosquitos. That was the excuse used, but there’s little reason needed to set out chairs and picnic along a stream.
Working a new riffle
The fishing was adequate, but the weather was superb.
The wildflowers have shifted from large yellow and white petals, to tiny blossoms in shades of purple and blue, with an occasional flashy daisy.
Fleabane
Falsegold Groundsel
The Kestrals are still very protective, ganging up an any large raptors even just flying along the water. We saw them knock an osprey off a tree limb, easily sending it on his way.
The geese are raising goslings, and ducks are always trailing a brood amid the tall grasses at streams edge.
An abundant run off left lush growth and great habitat for birds and water fowl.
One of the trips to the river was an afternoon drive.
We were trying to hit an evening hatch and some dry fly fishing. There were lots of strikes, but not a lot of hookups. I got in my casting practice though.
Aster
Campers are getting more common, which makes it hard to find secluded spots.
Headed back to camp after checking on the fisherman.
With campgrounds filling, we’ll move to different locations (primitive sites) and wait for fall to return to the river in less crowded conditions.
But then . . . that’s all part of settling into Summer.
While many of our posts are about fishing, that’s not the only thing we enjoy. We usually have a small menu of activities to choose from, while out on an adventure.
Wandering the high desert of Central Oregon, it’s impossible NOT to marvel at its geological features. The streams we sit along, spent the last millennia cutting out those basalt-rimmed canyons.
High cliffs of Sutton Mountain, near Painted Hills, Oregon
The Cascade Range to the west and the sage steppe to the east of us is a landscape of volcanic oddities.
The “Wave” at Fort Rock
Central Oregon’s northern expanse of the Great Basin took shape about three million years ago (Pliocene epoch).
Volcanic eruptions and the formation of shallow lakes deposited the material that is fodder for rock hounders today.
We’ve been picking over rock formations, digging pits and screening gravel beds for years.
It’s rare that we’ll come back from an outing without some samples in the back of the car.
Simple but essential gear
This week the focus of our trip was on rockhounding.
These June days are still cool enough to make scraping back layers of dirt and shifting through buckets of gravel bearable.
The journey was pulled from one many geology related books occupying space on our shelves.
In this case, a land owner allows access to BLM land across their property
This time around . . . our destination is Congleton Hollow and it’s 640 acres of BLM land which is open to rock collecting.
Intrepid rockhounder
A confusing collection of rock
Limb Casts are the target.When a lava flow engulfs a forest the encased tree limbs turn to ash leaving a cavity which is eventually filled with minerals that over millions of years become agates.
Green and pink stones with distinct wood grain and sometimes bark patterns are the prize. But that reward is hard dug and often results only in fragments.
High Desert roads are edged in carpets of Lupine
The South Fork of the Crooked River runs along the lower reaches of Congleton Hollow. The upper slopes, where most of the rock searching takes place, are bare except for a scattered few juniper trees.
There are shade and grassy meadows at the base of the hill, on the banks of a lazy flowing stream.
JQ has just the spot for this ‘boulder’ and she ferried it across a wide expanse to load it in the back of the car
We didn’t find a lot of Limb Casts, though JQ did lug back a large, stratified rock.
There’s no need for buckets of agates, and the point is to explore spaces. However, we always manage to leave with some rocks in our pockets.
For many years (due to my teaching schedule), summer didn’t begin until the second week in June. While that constraint came off when we retired, this week’s heatwave really felt like the start of summer.
There were a string of eighty degree days this week, matched with a dozen small wildfires. It feels like summer (our new norm).
A kestrel preens during a brief stop on a busy feeding schedule
A few things shift for us when the weather warms up.
Primarily our schedule . . . early starts to the day and early ends. This practice has two advantages; first it gets the active part of our day away from the heat, but it also tends to keep us away from the hordes.
Keeping an eye on things
About the time people start showing up on the river, we’ve had a choice of parking spots, a couple of hours of fishing, and lots of peace and quiet.
That is how we managed this week’s trip to the Crooked River.
Lupine seems to like the gravel edges of forest roads
Most of the spring wildflowers have been reduced to leafy stems, replaced with hardier summer varieties.
Lupine for example, is in full bloom on nearly every gravelly borrow pit. It lines our route with a carpet of purple and blue hues.
Casting over an evening hatch
Fishing was better this week. The river has settled into its summer flow and fish are taking up their usual holds.
Witnessed the kestrel pair fight off a bald eagle with incredible acrobatics. The falcons harried the eagle, and at one point, one plunged from above onto the back of the eagle hitting with ferocious impact.
The kestrels were in full hunt mode, stopping only long enough to drop off some tasty bits for the fledglings, before swooping back up the canyon walls.
By the time the breeze was starting to loosen it’s cooling power, a small group of picnickers set up a few hundred feet from us. That was our cue to load up and head for home.
And, what are you looking at?
Daytime temp, even on the river, was just over eighty and climbing. We’ll be back again during the cool of another morning.
We headed back up to the Crooked River this week. We lucked out and found our favorite campground . . . completely empty. 
