Happy Birthday to Me and Adios for a Va-cay!

Yesterday was my birthday. I thought it was going to be horrible, what with it being Monday, and having to work all day out in the heat, and having had a crummy week last week…..but I was pleasantly surprised. It was actually a great birthday. It was nice to not be in the office. Instead I hiked around in the field all day with my coworker Sarah who’s the best. She made me wonderfully gooey and delicious brownies which we both pigged out on, on the way home. I came home to a mailbox full of gifts and cards which is always good, and Brett took me out for a great dinner followed by ice cream cake with a sparkler on top! Plus…..I must comment on how great technology can be. In the last couple of months I have become reacquainted with a bunch of really great people that I have been missing and wondering what happened to them over Facebook. I normally hate these types of things, but this isn’t like MySpace or twitter or whatever. It’s only as cheesy as you want it to be. Anyway I’ve found some of my best friends from the past, including some folks over in Australia and Hawaii that I met while in Samoa, again over Facebook and we have been emailing regularly now, AND I’ve made new friends too.
I came home yesterday and found my inbox flooded with birthday greetings and wishes. It was really great. Brett got me a Dutch oven for my birthday. I had asked for a fly rod, but upon purchasing my new camera I decided that he should wait until Christmas to get me my fly rod. He however, decided I had to have something to open so he got me the Dutch oven. I recently took a Dutch oven cooking class and decided that I would love to have one for camping. When I get back from vacation I’ll have to post some of the photos of my friends Shaney and Dan teaching the Dutch Oven cooking class. Shaney and Dan are masters at this. They spend a lot of time in the back country either on horse packing trips or river trips and they always bring their Dutch Ovens for gourmet camping meals. Their chosen coals are actually cow patties most of the time. Shaney’s says it’s because you can find them everywhere out here. Not sure I would do the same but whatever works I guess. It was a lot of fun. In the class we made some sort of Swiss steak thing which I didn’t eat, enchilada casserole, chocolate cake, cobbler, potatoes, and corn bread. It was awesome. Brett even found and printed off some vegi-style recipes for me to try. I can’t wait to get cooking. I think we may even bring it to the coast. In addition, I also received, my new camera….So much fun, some books I wanted, some homemade gifts from my friend Pam and my sister and some wine… always a good idea!
Brett and I went camping this weekend for the 4th. We found a really beautiful spot along the Malheur River on the National Forest. I will post some of those photos this week when I get a chance as well. We took the dogs with us for the first time too and they had a blast. It was a success, they were well behaved and we’d definitely do it again.
More info on the craft and garden front to come too. I’ve been busy making birthday gifts since everyone seems to have been born in July, and the garden is progressing nicely, though all of this posting will have to wait until I get back from the coast. My little brother is flying out from Chicago on Thursday, and we are all headed to the Oregon coast on Friday morning to meet up with our good friend Jon, our neighbors Dave and Jan and Jan’s sister Dar and her husband. We’ll be crabbin’, beach combin’, hikin’ and relaxin’ I can’t wait.
More when I get back!
Cheers everyone!
Sandiana

Memorial Day Weekend Recap

In February, our dear friend Jon moved away to Klamath Falls. It's been hard on all three of us because we're extremely tight. Jon has been permanent fixture in our house for the past 3 years that we have known him, often stopping by for dinner and sometimes staying for breakfast. He recently got a new job in Klamath Falls and we were anxious to go and explore his new digs, see an old friend and of course meet his new little puppy Ellie who is too delicious for words. Don't let the face fool you though, she is completely immerced in her terrible puppy years and constantly entertains herself by attacking your feet. For my poor pups it was their tails that suffered the brunt of her puppy frustrations of working towards that set of adult teeth. Sage was not happy with Ellie and let her know it on a regular basis, and Bo being the gentle giant that he is took it with a grain of salt and quickly learned how to evade those needle-like puppy teeth.

Jon has been lucky enough to find himself a quaint little house in the middle of nowhere surrounded by mountains in all directions (lucky lucky guy), and so it was nice to sit outside in the evenings in the fresh air and enjoy nothing but the sound of crickets or the occasional owl, and some good conversation with 2 of my favorite guys.

We spent the weekend in cool mountain lakes surrounded by tall beautiful trees (something we greatly miss in the desert). He was going to take us to this one lake to fish but it was still snowed in so we decided to try our hand at fly fishing. I have always wanted to learn how to fly fish and lucky for me that Jon is a very good and very patient teacher. He was even able to teach Brett a thing or two, and although Brett has said over and over that he had no interest in learning to fly fish, I think he quite ienjoys it now so it's something we can do together.

I had a little trouble because I had to wear Jon's gear. It is not easy tromping around boulders and fast moving creeks in Men's size 13 boots and waders made for a guy who's 6'4" compared to my 5'7"; still with the careful crafting of a hiking stick made just for me and the occasional arm from Jon or Brett I was able to hold myself upright, and fortunately did not go under like a certain husband of mine did.....wish I had caught that one on camera :)

I want everyone to know that my first time ever fly fishing, and ever casting (and I wasn't even doing it right because I was still in practice mode), and I managed to land a record trout! it was a 20" red band trout!!! Jon couldn't believe it and neither could I. I don't think I have ever been so excited. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera because in case I went under I didn't want it going with me, so you'll have to take my word for it. I have to VERY humbled witnesses if that counts.

Those poor boys didn't catch anything the whole day but a couple of baby trout. I had a great time basking in all my girl glory!!! Redneck score : 0 coolest chick ever: 1 GINORMOUS trout :)

They took it well though, and we all had a blast. I am definitely "hooked" on fly fishing and I have asked Brett with a big pretty please if he'll buy me a fly rod for my birthday. We'll see. All in all it was a fun trip. So much so that Brett and I (if we can make it work with jobs and such in the next few years) are considering a move to K falls. We loved it there and the climate is a little more to my liking. Not sure if that would work out for us or not but we'll see. I was also abel to catch some good moments on camera including Brett doing his JcPenny pose for the camera in his fishing gear....better suck that belly in hun!

Well, I'm off for now. We are having monsoon rains here right now and there is finally a break in the weather so I have to go clean up the yard before it starts again.

Hope you all are well!

Sandiana

A Week Spent Hiking in Wilson Peak

Last week was really hot here in the 90’s to be exact which is pretty uncharacteristic for this time of year. Wouldn’t you know I of course picked that week to conduct wildlife surveys of the Wilson Peak area in southern Idaho. I couldn’t complain though because despite the heat the area on top was beautiful and bursting with flowers and critters of all sorts. I saw everything from wild horses, to bird nests to scorpions and lizards to name a few. I had our fancy work camera and was able to capture a few of these guys as well as the scenery on film. I’m really impressed with the images because of how hard it is to catch wildlife on film. These lizards were pretty tolerant to my size and the fact that I was looming within inches of them to get these photos. I found that as long as I moved slowly and they didn’t really sense that I was going to eat them, they were happy to stay basking in the sun. Of course they were probably wondering why this big idiot was so interested in shoving a camera in their face but whatever. It’s moments like these that I can totally see myself in a Farside cartoon.

It seems that even here I can't seem to get away from scorpions huh? Surprisingly enough this guy was a little bigger than the ones I saw in Texas....and I thought everything was bigger down there!

Anyway, I really had a great few days up there and I'm thinking it might be a neat place to backpack with Brett next spring when it's back to being cooler up there and the flowers are in bloom. I managed to add several more birds to my life list as well, that I hadn’t ever seen before. That’s always a sign of a good days “work?”. Plus it feels good to continue to further my knowledge of my camera as well as the area flora and fauna. I find that it is hard moving around because you always have to relearn everything. There are very few species here that overlap with the other places I have lived in, but that just makes everything more interesting I guess.
Anway, I hope you all are enjoying your summer, will try to post more often and will soon have photos up of our trip to Klamath Falls as soon as I have some free time!
Cheers!
Sandiana

Spring in Hells Canyon.....AHHHHHH

So this is where I spent one glorious day last week. I had never been to Hells Canyon before getting this job, and lucky for me we have a few Bald Eagle pairs that we monitor throughout the nesting season up there, so I get to go up there several times in the spring. If you ever have a chance to see Hells Canyon I highly recommend it, however I also highly recommend going in the spring. Within another month or so this will all be many fabulous shades of brown, prone to wild fires and hotter than ..... well.....Hell I guess ! We have had an awesome spring this year in terms of moisture and cool temps , so I was amazed at how green everything was, and for once there was an amazing wildflower year. I've posted some of those photos early on this year but this time when I went up there the bitterbrush was in full bloom (the yellow stuff), and there is no greater smell on this planet than a hillside full of bitterbrush I assure you. The deer LOVE this stuff, it's like ice cream to their palates, and as it were, I did see many deer including these 2 scraggly mama's getting in the middle of shedding their winter garb. It was an awesome day out and these photos don't do it justice. I would have taken many more flower photos, but we kept getting hit with monsoon rains on and off all day which made it challenging....wouldn't know it by the look of these photos but I managed to get these in between rain storms and nest checks. Sorry no nest photos, it was too slick to climb the hills so I could look down on the nests. maybe next time.

Hope you're all enjoying springtime where ever you may be

Sandiana

HAPPY EARTH DAY!

HAPPY EARTH DAY!

Don't blow it - good planets are hard to find. ~Quoted in Time

Nature provides a free lunch, but only if we control our appetites. ~William Ruckelshaus, Business Week, 18 June 1990

The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago... had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands. ~Havelock Ellis, The Dance of Life, 1923

Close Encounters of a Grouse Kind!!!

So I thought I would share these photos along with this little story. My husband Brett never has anything to say when I ask him how his day was each day. I usually get a grunt or a shrug of the shoulders, or if I'm really lucky, I get a "Not a whole lot happened". Well friday I came home from work and I asked him how his day was, (he is working for the BLM right now doing sage grouse lek counts), and he turns to me and says "Honey.....I had the craziest thing happen to me today!" FINALLY A STORY!!! And if you are a wildlife geek like myself, it happens to be a good story and one that I would not have believed if he hadn't taken the photos to prove it. So this is what happened:

He was out doing lek counts the other morning and had just finished up and was packing his stuff up in the truck when he noticed this blue grouse approaching. All of the sudden the blue grouse came running right up to him and started strutting and running in circles around his legs, and between his legs etc. Brett started taking photos of this crazy bird as it circled him. Then he knelt down to see if he could get better pictures and the bird climbed up on the back of his legs. This went on for a little while and Brett decided to leave. He was getting in the truck and that darn bird jumped up into the truck and landed on his lap. Brett got him out of the truck but then as he was pulling away the bird chased the truck for about a ¼ mile.He couldn’t believe this bird’s behavior, but it made for some good photos and a good story. And the moral of the story is : Beware of a blue grouse who's searching for love in all the wrong places :)

Hope everyone enjoyed their weekend!

SJ

The First Signs of Spring

I love Crocus's because when they arrive you know that winter is finally over. I took a walk outside today on the first warm day of spring and these beauties were everywhere, and there were a few bold honeybees out and about getting a jump start on a long summer's worth of work. They seemed a little desperate to gather as much pollen as possible fighting off others in the process. Hang in there little dudes, others will be popping up soon.

Hope everyone is enjoying the warmer weather....well except those poor souls in the east and in the upper PNW. Hang in there all you others, your time is coming soon.

Later

S