Eastern Oregon
I have to admit, my travel of eastern Oregon is in need of expansion. That might be more of a winter effort this year.
Here is what I do have!
Fort Rock
I’ll keep working on this page. There are a lot of great things in out east in Oregon
For one thing, that’s where the elusive airplane wrecks are (you go right by Fort Rock to get there.)
In the south-eastern part of the state in the early morning around Silver Lake the geothermal vents blow steam into the air. I’ve seen it several times but was in a van with coworkers heading to a trade show so yelling “STOP I MUST PHOTOGRAPH THIS” would have left me standing on the side of the road without a job….
Silver Lake is really lovely and so is Summer Lake. It is estimated that 40 percent of Pacific Flyway snow geese and Ross’ geese use
the Summer Lake and Harney Basins as a stop-over to reach their arctic breeding grounds each spring.
In the north eastern part of the state there are some real treasures, literally, Cornicopia, one of the great old gold mining towns, now a ghost town, still has many original buildings and equipment.
I have a lot of work to do, as I assume, like the rest of Oregon, has got to be a waterfall or two.
Christmas Valley
Christmas Valley sounds so quaint, adorable, cool....It's kind of a pit, in the middle of the desert that has a few really cool geological features.
Christmas valley is kind of a conglomeration of mistakes and misrepresentation. Originally, it was the Christman ranch, when Mr. Christman went to file as a town with the government they mistook his "N" on the end of his name for an "S" and thus the town of Christmas Valley was born.
In the 80's a developer that had a reputation as somewhat unscrupulous, was actually known to my grandma in Southern California, who was an escrow agent dealing with some developments in Bend, was marketing vacation properties there sight unseen with some really nice and unrealistic brochures with lovely lakes and the like on it.
Since then Christmas Valley has kind of languished and now is a land of ranchers, survivalists and old trailers with pitbulls gurading the industries that go on within.
Still, it is home to Crack In The Ground as well as Twin Fault (which I shall get to soon.) and The Airplane wrecks, which makes it worth the trip.
Eastern Oregon also the home to some great Oregon birds!
