The Balloon Tree Road

(Comment:  I spent half an hour composing a blog post for these photos, only to discover that it was on my stamping blog!  Copying and pasting didn't work....in fact, I mistakenly deleted all of it.)

We tend to make "loop drives" because we start at home and rarely come back the same way.  This particular drive required a 20-mile drive west on a state highway to Balloon Tree Road.  That Forest Service road then heads east across some of the Blue Mountains back home.  (Some day, we'll remember to note the mileage on one of these trips.)

 At the beginning of the drive, this is the wide, smooth road.  Going down into the valley was a different experience.

 Generally, this is the season for Sticky Asters, but this flower doesn't match the wildflower book.

 This is a variety of globe mallow, most likely the Checker Mallow.

 This tall pink flower is most likely the Mountain Globemallow.

 These are Blue Pod Lupines; generally they are late spring bloomers, but this year wildflowers were blooming much longer at higher elevations.

 This is the "edge" that is above our goal of the valley floor where home is.

 Indian Valley, where Elgin (pop. 1700)  is the only town.  "The Knob" formation is in the foreground.

 The downhill road was rocky and rough, with a lot of curves.

 It's difficult to see just how rough this road is, but much of it was washed out from the heavy spring rains and melting snow.

 This land once was owned by the local timber company but was sold to an investment company, whose only purpose is to cut trees to make money.  Most likely, this is a logging road; the area was logged a few years ago so most of the trees are young.

 This odd little flower is probably a "Little Pipsissewa" -- a Native American name for a plant used to treat kidney stones.

 Just like that, as we were rockin' and rollin' on the rocky road down to the valley floor....we came on a herd of sheep.

 This is a terrible photo, but during our descent we drove by the sheep herder and his tiny trailer home for the summer.  Generally, the herders are Central Americans.

Right after this photo was taken, one of the big herd dogs came bounding out of the brush, barking ferociously.  These dogs bond with the sheep, not with the humans.  They defend their 4-legged charges against real and imagined dangers.  

I was happy we had driven this loop, but I said I'm not really interested in repeating the drive. 😉

Eagle Eye .... way up there!

It's always on my list to photograph an eagle; we often see them here but catching them with a camera lens is challenging.  On a drive this week, we took a lane we hadn't driven before.  As we anticipated, it ended in someone's barnyard.  On the way, though, we saw two full farm ponds.  Canada geese are paired and settling down; far above in a bare snag sat the eagle.  Two problems: the sun was almost directly overhead, so the eagle was in its own shadow; the branch was about 30 feet high which tested my 400m lens to the max.

"Stay Out"

I'm falling behind in my plan to make a blog post at least once a month; I'll blame it on old age, busy-ness, and a bit of disorganization!  So a long drive in the country (we have a lot of it around here) produced the images for this post: signs on private property.  Because we are a hunting area, private landowners "mark their territory" with No Trespassing and No Hunting signs.  As simple as the message is, it's available in a variety of presentations.

Living in the Country

There are many times that I complain about living so far from "anything" here in NE Oregon, but when I'm on a drive into the country any direction from my house, I admit that I love being able to access this part of Oregon.  Narrow dirt and gravel roads turn into narrower single lanes bordered by a variety of evergreen trees and wire fencing.  Spring is late this year...because winter was late, so the countryside is just now starting to green up.  This post features photos I took on a short drive this week, traveling just 16 miles round-trip from our back door.

Three Directions from Home

There is a lot of land surrounding the place that I live, and I drive the country roads often. Early fall was beautiful in color, but the cold settled in quickly and we got our first snow right after Halloween.  The following images were taken on two separate drives that I took, one north, one west, and one east.The latter was after the cold had moved in.