The Steens, Sept 29 - Oct 4, 2007, part II

OK, work first -- worked on the exhibition proposal for the show at the G&V Walters Center for 2008. It's more or less done, I'm just waiting for 1 last image to show up. And if it doesn't arrive tomorrow, I'm going ahead without it. Also decided to go with spiritone for web host. They're local, they're nice to non-profits, and they've been easy to deal with for all the web sites that I've done for other people. This will take care of the problems I sometimes have for hosting my web site on a computer at home -- like when our modem went down just as we were leaving on a 2 week vacation last summer.

So, the Steens trip. The 2nd day, we just drove around the Malheur refuge area. Went to the Refuge Headquarters (sounds so official) and the museum, and then drove around on the self-guided auto tour. (All these photos were taken with the phone camera still.)

Every couple hours, we had to loop back to the Refuge HQ because that was the only place we had cell phone reception, and I had to check to see if my Tuesday night class at IPRC was going to go! (As it turned out, not enough people signed up and the class didn't go.)

But anyhow, this is the view at the parking lot at HQ. Across the marsh, but you can't really see it in this picture, is Malheur Lake. There's a telescope set up in the HQ and you can see the pelicans gathering on the lake. Otherwise, you can barely even see the lake.



Close to the HQ is the Sod House Ranch where we stopped to take a look. Just so happened that a volunteer archeologist and his wife arrived at the same time and he offered to give us a tour. A couple of the cows at the Sod House Ranch:



I think these two were from the Buena Vista Lake which is dry right now. They actively manage the lakes to make sure the correct proportions of certain types of plants grow.



So it's just kind of marshy right now:



Late in the afternoon, we came across a couple of 'real cowboys' (horses & bandanas!) with a herd of cows:



That's it for the Steens. Looks like we're going back next mid-Sept for the Mid-Autumn Festival alright!

The movie tonight was The Kingdom. Lots of plot holes!