Cat Tracks!

Morning walk was rather interesting. We took Abby and headed north on the trail at the bottom of our property, then cross country toward the river. This is the route we took - partly on animal trails, and partly just toward the destination.
I wanted to give you an idea of how steep it was, but this doesn't show it very well At the bottom of the ravine, it flattens out and there are remnants of an old farm road. For those who don't know, Crooked River Ranch was once a large working cattle ranch. There are several stories circulating about the early history of the ranch, but in the early 1900's it did become a cattle ranch. In the mid 60's, the movie "The Wild West" was shot on the ranch and it was those folks who built "Hollywood Road" which goes down to the Crooked River. In 1972, Bill MacPherson purchased the ranch with the intention of turning it into a destination resort. Remember Crooked River Bob from the TV commercials? More people became full timers and the ranch was eventually zoned as residential instead of recreational. There are close to 5,000 residents now, living in everything from the original single-wide mobile homes to million dollar estates. We love the diversity. More families are living here now, and they are considering building a school. Below is an old ranch road.
From the flats, we headed upstream, back toward our place, but closer to the river level. Bill and Joyce are looking at eagle's nests on the canyon wall. This is the Deschutes, looking south.
Looking north - the "trail" is pretty much an animal trail and we saw a lot of tracks today
We are pretty sure that this is a bobcat or cougar print. I should have put something down to compare for size - the print is almost as big as my palm. Good walk today - we were gone 2 hours, so good exercise, too. A beautiful day today. I am doing laundry and hung the clothes out to dry - it's probably in the 60's right now. I am ready for SPRING!!!!!!!!