Tag: Video

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A Blustery Fall Day

Lake Aspen is nestled among eight-acres of pine forest, wetland, and meadow habitat

It took less than a week to wash a summer’s worth of smoke and dust out of the Central Oregon air. It’s  been cloudy and wet, which means road trips were shorter and closer to home.

It got cold enough to breakout beanies and gloves, layer up and dig out the rain coats. With stormfronts there are always gusty winds that add to the bite of Fall temps.

Trumpeter swan

We went to a favorite spot, Sunriver Nature Center, to check on our favorite river otters, swans, and water fowl.

The beauty of this place is there are literally miles of walking paths, most of them paved. We did venture a bit away from the pond  and out along the airfield and horse pasture.

 

Paved areas for biking and walking lead to forested trails
This tunnel leads to even more paths

We were working out kinks in a new iPhone camera rig and trying to give Tip a chance to stretch his legs as well. The migration season is in full swing, but there were just a few flights of geese and ducks. I suspect most of them are year round inhabitants of the pond.

This week the house got a seasonal cleaning, the idea is next week’s road trips will be a bit farther afield. We’ve made the shift to cold weather gear and restocked cocoa and a flask of whiskey in the picnic bag. Now is the time to get in those last fall excursions before the winter snows set in.

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Falling into fall

A gnarled western juniper thrives in the arid climate of the high desert

This week we continue to embrace the fall season with short road trips. We are taking advantage of the cool mornings and warm afternoons without smoke laden air.

Wild sage along the riverbank
At winter levels the Crooked River has exposed rock and weed beds.

One downside of the shift to winter is the river draw downs.

To get reservoirs back to capacity for the next irrigation season, dams on the upper Deschutes and Crooked river restrict flows, basically lowering river levels. The Crooked River is down to what seemed like a trickle and it’s water was too turbid to fish. However, that didn’t deter Tip from exploring.

The other activity was pizza baking … from scratch.

This Ooni is heated by gas but cooks more like a wood fired oven.

We’d picked up a gas pizza oven at the end of summer and have been playing with recipes. There is a bit more involved in making pizza, rather than heating up frozen or just carry out. There’s a learning curve and failed attempts, but we are starting to dial in the best cooking method and the last few pies have turned out great.

Scratch-made gives you a delicious pie with total control over the ingredients.

The Ooni oven will be great for other “wood fired” baking jobs. Flat bread is on the list to try.

For now, we’re working on tweeking dough recipes to fine tune our pizza crust, very important, as there are a surprising number of variations possible.

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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.
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Smokey Daze

This week smoke from all those wildfires settled over Central Oregon. The nation’s largest wildfire burns just an hour south of us and a stormfront  brought hundreds of lightning strikes and of course, more fires. Nearly all the “hot spots” have been extinguished, but the big blazes in Southern Oregon and Northern California resist efforts to contain them.

All trips to the river result in a wet dog.

Mostly we stay indoors and out of the thick air. One day, when the air quality got a bit better we did the Cascade Highway loop. This takes us right by a favorite spot on the upper Deschutes.

Tip got to do some swimming and we had a brief picnic lunch before the smoke settled back down on us. The weatherman suggests air quality might get better next week.  But we have to keep in mind that August is peak wildfire season so we’re not holding out much hope. Glad we managed a few moments on the river.

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The Off Season

Trails edge the Crooked on both sides of the river.

Fly fishing makes up a major portion of our weekly excursions and winter weather can add some difficulty to our plans.

Late fall typically marks the end of the regular fishing season. Fortunately Oregon has waters that remain open year round. Fish don’t stop feeding when the snows come and the lakes freeze. Bug hatches still occur regularly, you just use smaller patterns or fish imitations of insects found subsurface.

The biggest adjustment to off season fishing is you need to layer up before going to the stream. A near freezing morning on a typical cloudless Central Oregon day can warm to shirtsleeve temperatures by afternoon. Fingerless gloves are also an essential addition to the ensemble.

Three streams with access all year are the Fall River, Deschutes River (middle and lower stretches) and the Crooked River.

When the temperature drops we might have to hike though a blanket of snow to get to the water.

The Fall River is a beautiful spring-fed stream flowing through rolling pine forest. It is open to fly fishing only and features brook, brown, and rainbow trout.

As for the snow Central Oregon is blessed with more clear than cloudy days. While Bend and La Pine can get accumulations of two or more feet, our roads are well maintained and in just a couple of clear days any snow pack is reduced at lower elevations.

The Deschutes and Crooked Rivers run through basalt column canyons that are sparsely timbered. This exposure to the sun seems to keep river banks clear of snow.

Closer to home, the Fall River wanders through a forested landscape and it’s banks hold snow much longer.

The river is a few hundred steps off a well traveled road with numerous pullouts and a clearly marked walking path runs along both banks.

Adding a splash of whiskey to hot coffee or cocoa is a regular winter treat.

The winter weather hasn’t been a deterrent in getting out. January cold spells mean we bundle up and add a shot of whiskey to the cocoa for extra oomph. We still like to enjoy the days outside.