Thursday, August 14, 2008

Photos and more

It was a dark and stormy day............
This was taken a week ago or so - I tried to get a lightening shot with my point and shoot, but no luck. The clouds were pretty impressive, though.And then it started to hail - and it really came down for a while. With all the storms, we got about .6" of rain. Enough for the garden for a day.......
We decided to take a day off Monday and take the kayaks out for a spin - since we still hadn't taken them down from on top of the car from the last time we went out...............
We drove to Perry South Campground on the Metolius arm of Lake Billy Chinook. A relatively quiet little spot, but full of boaters. We put in and paddled up river - there are quite a few "cabins" on what I assume is lease land from the forest service. The places range from shed type cabins to ones probably worth 1/2 mil.
There is no power to the area, so most of the nicer ones have solar panels - and a cistern for water.
The gooses have found a home. I imagine the folks feed them when they're around.
This is one of the nicest homes we saw. Lots of great big windows, nice deck, several nice boats... Oh, the life! If you can see them.... there are a couple of Great Blue Herons along the shore. Right after I took this photo, they both flew off making quite a racket.
The river starts to narrow here and there are no more ski boats, only fishermen. Really, really pretty.Someone's nest high in a snag - eagle? osprey? heron?So, I'm traveling along, getting a lot of exercise paddling against the current (Dean was fishing)
and I come upon this sign
Presumably - it means motor boats, but I could see rapids right ahead, so I turned around and the wind started blowing - against me - erasing the benefit of the current. Oh, darn!

So, I mentioned that Dean was fishing - he had his pole in the water, anyway. There were fish jumping all around us, a hatch going on. He tried everything he had and couldn't catch one. I was hoping one would jump in the boat so he could "get a fish", but that didn't happen. It was pretty amazing, though, watching the fish come out of the water. And when I say "all around us" - I mean it!

This next series of photos need some explanation. The juvenile eagle in the first photo flew over my head and landed in this tree. He just sat there for a while and I took a few photos, getting a little close (in my kayak) for each one. Then another big bird (no, not THAT big bird....) came along and chased it out of the tree. In the middle photo, I thought I got both of them, but didn't - the lag time in digital cameras is too long for action photos......... The final photo shows the big one who came back and hung around for photos for quite a while. I don't think it was an eagle, but I'm really not sure. It was BIG!

















Thought for the day..........

Dance like no one is watching,
Love like you'll never be hurt,
Sing like no one is listening,
Live like it's heaven on earth.

-William Purkey

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