Hope

 After dropping Connie off at her home, I arrived at my home just at dark on Thursday. As I walked from the truck to the house, Hope greeted me like a long lost jailer, with the hopes of me feeding her. I had contacted Tami, on the day before leaving, and told her not to feed Hope any more so that I could possibly hunt her when I got home. The one problem with having a life, is that it sometimes cuts into ones hawking. Tami however had done a great job and her weight was just right when I picked her up on Friday. Generally a week long disruption will take a couple of extra days to iron out.

A normal Hawk of a different species would have most likely suffered performance issues after a week of inactivity, but the Harris is not like any other species. They like to hunt more than they care to eat. Her weight was perfect, with the extra day of not being fed, she was just at the bottom of her preferred weight range. 

I went to Arock to hunt the Lava bluffs there. The last time there, I found a Jack further up the road than I normally hunt. I went back there to start this time. I have been taking the dogs with me, and after some scoldings I have finally convinced Josie that I want her to stay close to me. In truth, about the only benefit that I can see to the hunt routine, is that the dogs don't feel left out. I can live with that. Nice close slips work out the best. If you give a Jack Rabbit time to plan, he will generally beat us. Having those large ears, they know where we are to the inch, and most generally do not wait around to see what we are selling.

We covered a lot of that hillside and did manage to get a few slips, but they all managed to evade her. Eventually I began to work my way back and we busted one pretty close on some more open Sage. Hope caught him. It was a bit uphill from my position and I was covering as much ground as I could. When I got close I could see Josie standing back from the tussle, just as I wanted her to. Her tendency to get in there seems to have always been misunderstood by Hope, so I had to make Josie understand that biting the rabbit was a no no!

By the time that I arrived back at the car we had covered three miles. I was totally surprised that we really didn't loose any real time in our season, and really proud of Hope and her desire to hunt.

 

Crater Lake

 After leaving Kimball Park , we drove on up to Crater Lake, and  using our Senior Pass drove on up to the lodge, and rest rooms!   ( Senior pass you remember?)

Most of the stuff inside the lodge was closed. Of course the concession was open.

A picture or two of the lake from that angle. 

We took the rim road around and stopped occasionally to take a picture form a bit different angle.

If you can, notice the Red cinder layer in the cliff face.

There was a pile of trees growing out of that one stump.

This is a view of Fort Klamath, and Klamath Lake in the background.

We couldn't have picked a better day, nice and warm, crystal clear sky, and best of all not a lot of traffic or crowds to deal with.

We drove back on the back side of Klamath and Agency Lake to Rocky Point. A nice scenic trip around Klamath Lake. We stopped at the Favell Museum to look at his stock of Indian Artifacts. Fee was $9.00 each, and we were the only ones there.

A weather system was blowing in and the temps dropped to the teens in Klamath and was supposed to be colder the next day, so we packed up the next morning and headed home.

Kimball Park, Fort Klamath,Or

 On our way to Crater Lake, we made a side trip to Kimball Park. It is the headwaters of the Wood River that is a Blue Ribbon Trout Stream and one of the most beautiful parks that I have ever visited.

The water is crystal clear and cold.

Connie is standing at the spot that the water comes out of the ground.

Josie and Brick were of course having a great time.

The park was empty when we arrived and they were

able to run free.

When I lived in the area there were huge Brown Trout that lived in these waters, and resisted every offering that I could dream up to try.

Plum Valley

After we left the Bear VAlley area the first thing I did was go to O'Reilly's in Klamath Falls to get some batteries for the trailer. When I closed it up to make the move I had to have Connie hold the button down while I pushed from the outside. It was slow but we were able to close the slide back up again. 

A year after I retired from the Railroad we sold this place to a Couple who have since become our friends. We try to get together at least once a year. This year it was apparently our turn. They have done well with the place and it is quite beautiful. Our camping spot is the place that our mobile home used to sit. 

The place looks like a park. I used to grow hay and alfalfa under the trees.

On our trip to see Crater Lake I could resist a couple pictures of Mount Mcloughlin across the lake.

 We enjoyed our visit very much, there was a bit of nostalgia in seeing the area again, but it no longer felt like home. I was only a tourist visiting.

Trip to Klamath Falls

They have changed the format of this blog site and things are much more difficult to arrange than before, so its not as neat as it used to be. In fact I am finding it to be a pain in the butt. I will attempt to work with it at least for a while.

Connie and I had wanted to take a trip with the fifth wheel to the coast this year, but with the fires all over we decided that it just wasn't to be. Instead we decided to go to Klamath Falls. She wanted to see the Lava Beds again and I wanted to see some friends. 

I loaded everything that I could think of in the fifth wheel and trundled up to Burns to pick her up. Our first day was only to Christmas Valley and out to the lost Forest on the East edge of the Sand Dunes. The road had been improved enough that I felt comfortable in taking the Fifth Wheel in there. I was thinking that in October there wouldn't be any one camping there. For the most part I was right, at least for one night anyway.

The camp area is in a grove of Ponderosa Pines at the edge of the Sand Dunes. I do not know the story concerning these trees, but they are way the heck out in the desert miles and miles away from any other Ponderosa's. Thus the "Lost Forest". Every thing was fine until I began to level the fifth wheel and the battery went stone dead. In the middle of the night, the furnace stopped burning because there wasn't enough power to spark a fire in the furnace. So I got up at 2 AM and fired up the generator so that we could have a little heat. The next morning rigs began coming in for the weekend and that was all the incentive  I needed to load up and head to Klamath Falls.

Our next stop was at an old friends place in Bear Valley, just up from the Calif border. We based out of there for three days, while we visited every thing South of Klamath. Mostly it was driving around getting a look at all the area South of Klamath and visiting some friends from my Rail road days. We visited the Petroglyphs in Northern Calif and located the site of the relocation camps that were used to restrain the Japanese population during World War 2.

Our last day there we went down to the Lava Beds in Northern Calif. They too had been through a Fire and lots of things that we wanted to see were closed down.

                     You can see where the fire was stopped on the North end of the Lava Beds.

                                            This is looking East across the Lava Flow 

                                                                   Looking South

There were very few tourist this late in the year, but possibly it was due to the fact that almost every thing was shut down.