As part of my October road trip to Utah and Arizona (with Pan and Hera in the Traveling Cat Adventure Vehicle), I finally visited gorgeous Bryce Canyon National Park. I stayed a couple of nights at the Sunset Campground and walked or biked to the nearby viewpoints and trailheads to avoid the packed parking lots. I definitely suggest that the prime hike to experience is the Peakaboo Loop trail (and I suggest going clockwise). It was fantastic! And you should combine it with the Navajo Loop trail (don’t skip “Wall Street”) and/or the Queens Garden trail.
Darlene and I managed to meet up with Glenn, Michele and Seaerra in Eastern Oregon this past week to experience the total solar eclipse together. We snagged a nice dispersed camping spot in the Malheur National Forest in an area I had scouted out back in June and we arrived four days early to get ahead of any potential crowds. As it turns out, we were in a remote enough area to only see a scattering of other campers.
We were also very lucky with the weather as there were a number of distant wildfires filling the skies with smoke days before and then it turned cloudy Sunday afternoon. But on Monday, August 21st, the day of the eclipse, we had clear blue skies! (And smoke-filled skies the very next morning.)
A short video montage of the eclipse viewing experience (2.5 minutes)
And yes, seeing a total solar eclipse is truly an amazing experience. There’s the hour or so of build up beforehand as the light turns queer and dim and the heat of the sun fades away but then, as the last thin crescent splinter of sunlight disappears, you pull off your eye protection and… boom! The sun’s gorgeous corona suddenly appears streaming all around the pure black disc of the moon. It’s an incredible sight to behold. The sky was dark enough to reveal a couple of planets and a few brighter stars. The sky doesn’t go completely dark because of both the sun’s wispy corona and scattered sunlight from 35 miles away or less in every direction, outside the shadow of the moon.
The view was entirely captivating but, before we knew it, our two minutes of totality was already ending: a small bright bead of light starts to form which quickly brightens to create the stunning “diamond ring” effect. And then back on with the solar filters and glasses.
I had several cameras set up and recording different perspectives: one with a telephoto lens, one on a drone hovering out-of-earshot, one focused on the scene of us and one on my telescope to capture a much closer view (an 8-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain with a focal reducer to widen the view) and I’m so glad I did as we were able to see several solar eruptions in progress around the edge. Gorgeous!
Darlene and Michele also took some nice pics and video with handheld cameras. Click through for the full gallery of pictures and videos:
Here’s Michele (my sister-in-law)’s take on the experience: Midnight Sun
Update: Somebody asked me about our white sheet spread out on the ground and whether we had managed to see the elusive “shadow bands”. The answer is no, but this question prompted me to go back to the video that was rolling the whole time to see if I could find them.
They’re supposed to be very faint, thin, moving shadows (aka, “shadow snakes”) that are difficult to see and more difficult to record. We had looked specifically for them on the sheet about a minute before totality and then of course we were completely distracted by the amazing show in the sky afterward.
However, examining the video recording more closely and turning up the contrast, I think I may have found them:
Last week, Darlene and I were able to spend six days following the Mendocino Coast (with the cats in the Traveling Cat Adventure Vehicle, of course), continuing north from where we left off on the Sonoma Coast in December, just north of Fort Ross. We discovered that all the state park campgrounds were full going up the coast for the coming days but we kept managing to find something.
We stayed the first night at Stillwater Cove and then snagged a spot in an overflow area at Salt Point State Park, where we spent an afternoon mountain biking up to the top of the park and part of the morning flying the drone around. We visited the Point Arena Lighthouse, which turned out to be more interesting than I expected and we snagged a nice spot in another overflow area on the beach at the Van Damme State Park. We were able to grab a vacated spot in the park the next morning and then headed out to explore the Mendocino Headlands. We also checked out the Russian Gulch State Park.
This area around Mendocino has a lot of cool sea caves – we’ll need to come back some time and book a guided sea kayak tour to check them out. Fort Bragg turned out to be pretty uninteresting and we just passed through, stopping at MacKerricher State Park instead for lunch and to walk around. Our final and fifth night was at Westport Union Landing State Beach overlooking the bluffs. At this point, Highway 1 turns inland and you leave the coast for good. Our last day was essentially spent just getting back home to lots of traffic jams.
Last stop on our return from Oregon was a couple of nights near and on Mt. Shasta in California. We enjoyed a lazy morning after camping out off a forest road an hour north (with Shasta in view) and then drove up to Bunny Flat on Mt. Shasta at 7000 ft. and spent the afternoon hiking a couple of miles up to the Sierra Club climber’s hut (built in 1923!). We found a nice spot to camp afterwards just below Bunny Flat.
This ended Pan and Hera’s longest outing in the Traveling Cat Adventure Vehicle – three weeks! They seem to have adapted quite well to traveling in it and it seems like we could go indefinitely now. Yay!
Heading south from Mt. Hood in late June, we stopped off at the Crooked River gorge in the Peter Skene Ogden State Park between Madras and Redmond. We were a bit bewildered by how many people were gathering and setting up lawn chairs as if waiting for a big event. Unfortunately, we made the mistake of asking. ;-) Turns out they were all there awaiting the passing of an historic steam train engine (Southern Pacific 4449) to cross the bridge. It was due within the hour so we relocated the Traveling Cat Adventure Vehicle and decided to wait. After a couple of hours though, it became clear from news being relayed around that there had been delays and it was still an hour or so out. So we bailed.
Our destination was actually the Newberry National Volcanic Monument and this proved to be a nice place to spend a few days. We camped the first and last night on some forest roads and one night at one of the campgrounds in the caldera alongside Pauline Lake. We had a crazy red sky sunset one night, enjoyed some early morning kayaking on the completely still water and a nice trail ride up to near the caldera rim on our mountain bikes. We hiked the mile-long Lava River Cave lava tube and checked out the lava tree casts. There’s actually plenty of other trails and caves to visit too but we had to move on.
While we were in the Columbia River Gorge area last month, Darlene and I had the chance to spend half a day at the Western Antique Aeroplane and Automobile Museum in Hood River. This place is only ten years old but it has a huge and fascinating collection of antique, but still operational, cars and planes. They hold numerous events and classes. For example, every second Saturday is a “play day” where they bring out and fly or drive a number of the cars and planes to let people experience them. They also hold classes to learn about and get to drive antique Model T’s (which sounds very cool) or drive classic cars from the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s. They do restoration work on site, and they host an annual “fly-in” event where you get to see a lot of these antique planes in the air.
I particularly liked how they juxtapose old airplanes and automobiles from the same era. And I thought it was pretty interesting how old cars look so different and so obviously antique; whereas airplanes from the same time period don’t look so different than planes today. It was also fun to be reminded of how seat-of-the-pants flying and driving was back in the early days.
After picking up Darlene from the Portland airport, we headed over to the Columbia River Gorge for sightseeing, hiking and mountain biking. There was certainly a lot to see and do and we ended up spending over four days in the area. We started with the road up to the Vista House on the historic highway 30 (west to east) and enjoyed the view. The campgrounds were full that night on the south side of the river so we had to cross over to the other side to find a place for the night. We snagged a spot back on the south side at mid-day and hiked the lovely loop trail from Multnomah Falls up and over and down to Wahkeena Falls (and various falls in-between). We started the next day with a shorter hike from the campground to Upper Horsetail Falls before heading out to go tour the Bonneville Fish Hatchery and then the visitor’s center at the Bonneville Dam (both very cool and interesting).
We stayed at a great county park outside of Hood River for the next two nights and enjoyed a full, long day of really fantastic mountain biking trails at Post Canyon. And then, on the last day, we burnt up half the day checking out the huge number of old airplanes and cars at the Western Antique Aeroplane & Automobile Museum in Hood River. (I’ve put up a separate post and gallery for this place. We both thought it was really great.) By afternoon, we had made it up to the Mt. Hood ski area for a rest stop for the kitties before heading onwards and south for new adventures.
After dropping off Darlene at the Portland airport, Pan and Hera and I headed east for a week, to follow the path of the upcoming total eclipse and find a nice possible campsite. We checked out the countryside from Madras to Unity and in the process discovered the gorgeous, extensive and richly varied landscape of the John Day River basin. Along the way, I visited portions of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, including the Painted Hills area and the Thomas Condon Paleontology Center. I certainly was not aware that central Oregon had such an important mammal fossil record.
I decided not to try to capture the constantly changing landscape in pictures as I would’ve been trying to pull off the highway every few miles. So this gallery consists only of pictures and video from the places I stopped overnight, or where I went hiking or biking. One frustrating aspect of this area though is how much of the John Day River basin is private land and not accessible to the public – no trespassing signs everywhere, even on county roads that lead to public lands.
