Weekend in Oregon

I spent last weekend with the family at my parents' house in Central Oregon. I suppose the big thing was the discussion my dad called with all of my siblings, my sister-in-law, and of course my mom, about what to do with the house now that they are moving to a condo in Portland. The upshot of the discussion is that they'll hang onto it for another year, after which my brother will probably buy it. That works for me, because it means we'll still be able to do family gatherings there, and I do love that place. Strange how these things work out, because if they'd been ready to sell before the housing market crashed, there's no way in hell my brother would've been able to afford it.

Other than that it was the usual family entertainment, with little Celine (my niece's daughter) who is now mobile, providing the main show. Yesterday I went for a 7.5 mile hike with my sister, niece, and nephew-in-law. We walked through beautiful high desert terrain out to a point where you can see the beginning of Lake Billy Chinook, where the Crooked, Metolius, and Deschutes Rivers enter and only the Deschutes leaves. Didn't see much wild life, although Jake heard a warning buzz from an off-trail rattlesnake, which of course did its job of scaring the bejeebus out of him. Saw a zillion wild flowers. Managed to not get badly burned, although I did get a couple of blisters from my newish hiking boots. I may post a photo or two later once I've had a chance to download the handful I took and have a look at how they turned out.

A brief tour of Crooked River country

I can't say the quality of these photos is all that great, but I feel that I've written about my trips to the Crooked River Canyon a lot without giving much in the way of visual aids. These four photos were taken on the hike I mentioned in my previous post, which took us along Otter Bench Trail and Opal Pool Loop. This first shot shows the canyon, which has two layers. The river cut the broader canyon first, then it was halfway filled by another lava flow (or series of flows), and the river cut the that rock in a narrower canyon down to its current depth. As I mentioned in the last post, there are three rivers in this area (the other two are the Metolius and the Deschutes, and all of this water flows into the mighty Columbia to the north), and all three have cut similar canyons.



( Cut to three more photos )