Rhyolite, NV

Prospector and Penguin?

Tribute to Shorty Harris (1994) -
by Fred Bervoets

Before entering Death Valley we passed though the ghost town of Rhyolite. It was a booming mining town around the turn of the century.

Ghost Rider -
by Albert Szukalski

These sculptures are part of the Goldwell Open Air Museum and were created by a group of Belgian Artists.

Lady Desert: The Venus of Nevada (1992) -
by Dr. Hugo Heyrman

Rhyolite Last Supper -
by Albert Szukalski

Sit Here! (2000) - by Sophie Siegmann

Rhyolite Train Station

The train station is privately owned and guarded by a tall chain link fence.

Most of the other buildings in town are just ruins (and unfortunately it seems that I didn't take a picture of any of them).

Bottle House - built by Tom Kelly in 1906

Hopefully I will be able to ID some of these plants. Check back over the next few days.

After looking at the sculptures and the ruins of the ghost town we found another geocache in the area and enjoyed more desert wildflowers.

These flowers were extremely tiny. Click here to see them next to a toothpick.

Beatty, NV

We arrived in Las Vegas late Friday night and drove to Beatty, Nevada just north of Death Valley.

We spent the night in the Stagecoach - it had good reviews online but our room was near the laundry facilities or something. Loud machine noises kept us awake, and I accidentally set the time on the alarm clock and we woke up 2 hours earlier than we intended.

Bird in a palm tree outside the Stagecoach.

There were lots of these birds in the trees and on the Stagecoach sign. They were very noisy and made strange sounds.

Beatty has it's own "B" up on the mountain, just like the Hollywood sign.

Desert Paintbrush - Castilleja chromosa

Location of our first Nevada geocache.

Shortly after leaving the hotel we stopped at this rocky area along the roadside to search for a geocache.

View from the top.

Closeup of mountain.

Mormon Tea - Ephedra torreyana

Narrow-Leaf Crypanth -
Crypantha angustifolia -
AKA White Forget-Me-Nots

Gravel Ghost - Atrichoseris platyphylla

Missing Geocache!

While we were in NC for the holidays, I received an email from some Portland geocachers. They had solved the puzzle to our first cache hide, Kielikurssi, but couldn't find the cache and told us it looked like the area had flooded in recent rains.

I stopped by the cache site to check on it and found the lower portion of the path completely underwater. It's very likely our cache has floated away, but we won't know until things dry up a bit. As I returned to the car, I saw this cool mushroom.

Trip to NC

For the next week, we'll be writing our blog from 4936 Broad Hollow Drive.

This picture is from our trip last year. Sami really enjoyed playing with the dog, Cody. We decided to take Daddy and the dog geocaching with us. Daddy really enjoyed it. Cody didn't like walking in the woods and refused to go any further.

Anyway, if you're in Charlotte between Christmas and New Year's and want to meet up with us, post a comment, send an email or call us.

Hike to Warrior Rock Lighthouse

On Saturday, the weather was supposed to be warm and sunny. We decided to go to Sauvie Island. We'd been there a couple other times to pick berries and to geocache. The wildlife area is supposed to be a great place to see birds, especially in the fall and winter.

We decided to park at the end of Reeder road and hike the trail to Warrior Rock Lighthouse. The map is from our copy of Best Easy Day Hikes - Portland, Oregon. It's a nice flat hike with some sections along the beach and others in the forest.

As soon as we got out of the car, it started sleeting. Not a good sign, but we were already there and properly dressed so we decided to keep going.

Snow Geese - Chen caerulescens

and

Canada Geese - Branta canadensis

When we were about halfway up Reeder Road, we saw all these geese grazing in the fields. As it turned out, they were nearly the only birds we saw the entire day.

Poor Little Fish

I was surprised to see this little guy just laying on the beach. He was dead already, but I would have figured some bird would've been glad to have such an easy dinner.

Normally Sami doesn't like to hike, but he decided that this trail was flat and therefore OK. We hiked a total of about 7.5 miles

Black Cottonwood - Populus balsamifera ssp. trichocarpa

The trail was completely covered in these beautiful yellow hearts.

Interesting orange mushrooms

We are now the owners of two very good mushroom books, All That the Rain Promises and More and Mushrooms of Northwest North America. Although I searched both books to try and identify this species, I still have no idea what it might be.

Warrior Rock Lighthouse seen from River View cache.

The lighthouse didn't seem so exciting, so we continued past it to a nearby geocache.

Just as we arrived at the cache site, this kayaker approached the tip of the island. We waited for him to pass before retrieving the cache.

Bricks and other debris at the North end of Sauvie Island

There were several fan shaped concrete slabs and an old broken down pier at this end of the island, but I haven't found any information as to why they were there. I can only assume they were part of homes or businesses built before this was a wildlife area.

Boise Cascade Mill

We headed to another geocache on the west side of the point and came across this mill. It's not on the island, but across the Multnomah Channel in St. Helens, OR.

Natural Bird House

On our hike back Sami noticed this hole in an old snag. Some bird definitely lives there. However, like all the other birds, he was not to be seen on this hike.

Barge heading South on the Columbia River

Snowberry - Symphoricarpos albus

Sometimes we forget that Portland is a major port. Then we see a boat like this and we're reminded once again.

Sunset at the Eastside Viewing Platform

We couldn't walk beyond the platform into the wildlife area because it's hunting season, but we did see a very nice (and very quick) sunset.

Ironically, it's mainly the hunters and not the birders or other environmentalists that pay for the protection of these great wildlife areas.

Tillamook Forest Center and Bayocean Spit

The weather forecast had predicted that Sunday and Monday would be nice. Since Sami and I had Monday off for Veterans Day we made tentative plans with Aaron to go to the beach. (His parents have a house in Tillamook.)

Saturday morning was beautiful so Sami and I decided we better take advantage of it. We headed down Hwy 6 towards the coast and stopped at the impressive new Tillamook Forest Center.

This replica lookout tower is not very tall or on a hill so the view wasn't as nice as I'd hoped, but it's set up with a bed and stove and all the other things the real towers had back in the 50's and there are very informative signs explaining everything.

One of the most interesting things in the tower was this insulated stool made by putting glass insulators on the feet of a regular wooden stool. The people who lived in these towers had to stand on the stool during electrical storms so they wouldn't be electrocuted. (Fortunately there aren't too many of those in this part of the country.)

View of the Forest Center from the Tower.

This doesn't look like much from the outside, but the center is actually very pretty on the inside with vaulted ceilings and large windows and beautiful views of the forest.

The pool in front of the center is reclaimed rainwater to be used in case of fire.

The Wilson River runs right past the Forest Center. Salmon are common in this river. There was a free lecture shortly after we arrived, so we learned a little about the life cycle of Salmon and how to identify the 5 types that we have in Oregon.

After the lecture we went to the large suspension bridge behind the building to see if we could see some Salmon in the river. Our guide had a couple of dead ones that had washed ashore after mating that morning, but we didn't manage to see any live ones.

While on the bridge, we saw the very cute American Dipper (Cinclus mexicanus) diving in the water to eat bugs. He's very small and fast though, so I didn't get a photo.

This picture is a boat ramp on the Wilson River. We found a geocache there and couldn't believe how steep the ramp was. I think you'd need a winch on your truck to get a boat up (or down) this thing and it still would be a bit scary. Another view here.

Orange Peel Fungus - Aleuria aurantia

Just outside the Forest center we saw this interesting orange fungus, and another wrinkly brain-like brown one.

After visiting the Forest center, we did a couple more geocaches in the area, where we saw more mushrooms including some that looked like little umbrellas, and others shaped like seashells.

Shore Pine - Pinus contorta var. contorta

In its regular upright form, pinus contorta is called Lodgepole pine.

When we arrived in the Town of Tillamook, home of the famous cheese factory, we decided to drive south around the bay and ended up on the Oceanbay Spit.

We'd never been there before, but the GPSr showed 3 caches on the spit, and we decided to hike down the path towards them.

Young Bald Eagle - Haliaeetus leucocephalus

The first part of the hike was flat and level, with views of the bay on one side and the ocean on the other. (Map)

We learned from the description on one of the geocaches that during the early 1900s there was a resort town on the spit called Bayocean (story here), but it fell into the ocean and was never rebuilt.

As the path headed north, we hiked though a heavily forested area where Sami found mushrooms that looked like a kind he used to pick in Finland.

We happened to have plastic bag with us, and he picked a gallon to take home. After we got home, he started to worry that they were not the kind he knew and so they're just sitting in our fridge while he tries to identify them.

When we came out of the forest we saw the eagle pictured above. At the time, we thought he was a different sort of eagle since the feathers on his head are not very white. After trying to ID the bird, I learned that the young Bald Eagles are brownish all over.

Elk - Cervus canadensis

On the beach we somehow took the wrong trail and couldn't get to the cache. Thick forests of shorepine and salal kept prevented us from getting any closer than 500ft.

We turned a corner and were surprised by a herd of elk. Since it was getting dark and the sun was setting, we decided we better head back to the car. Even though we didn't get close to any of the caches, it was a nice hike and we saw some cool animals.

Bug's Eye View

Fairy Ring Mushroom - Marasmius oreades

It was such a beautiful afternoon, I went geocaching before heading home from work. I was mostly unsuccessful, only finding one out of the three I tried. But I walked 5.4 miles and got this cool mushroom picture. In another place, I found a whole colony of mini mushrooms.

Oh, and here's a colorful oak tree picture from Monday and a western scrub-jay from Tuesday.

Geocaching at Night

We planned on going geocaching this afternoon, but discovered the geocaching website no longer provides the ebook format for the palm pilot. It took us 4 hours to install and figure out how to use the Geocaching Swiss Army Knife and CacheMate software.

Unfortunately it was dark by the time we got started, but at least we're paperless again. We found two caches tonight; the second one was by this nice fountain.

Hey Mr Wooly Worm, What's the Weather?

People say you can forecast the winter weather by looking at the banding on woolly worms - the larvae of the Isabella Tiger Moth - Pyrrharctia isabella.

I don't know if that's true, but the weather yesterday afternoon was excellent. We went geocaching for the first time in several months.

Since we were on our 399th cache find we decided to do a couple of puzzles. The first one was 19th Century American Authors - Edgar Allan Poe. Both the puzzle and finding the cache were pretty easy for that one. It was in a neighborhood park where we saw a lot of birds, a spider, and a very thorny Black Hawthorne tree.

The cache we did for our 400th find was called Tracklines. We had to match some trails drawn on the cache description to a map. I thought the trails would be in Forest Park, but after Sami and I spent an hour or so looking at the map with no luck, we each got on our computers and tried to come up with other solutions. I thought Google Earth might help because it shows other parks in the area and I figured I could look up their webpages and hopefully some trails. Just then Sami called from upstairs saying he'd located the area. He'd read the other finder's logs on the geocaching website that also recommended Google Earth. He didn't bother looking for parks, but spotted the trails themselves, clearly visible on the aerial photographs.

The hike in to tracklines was not too long, about 3/4 of a mile. It was my first "hike" since my sprained ankle. The final trail was covered in blackberries. Fortunately Sami knew that it would be (from reading the logs) and had brought garden gloves and pruning shears. We saw a cool purple flower with a caterpillar on it, more spiders, some mushrooms,some little pink flowers and the woolly worm of course. The fall color on the hillsides was beautiful and the sky was full of fluffy white clouds.

When we finally found the cache we discovered that it had a secret message inside with clues needed for the location of another geocache. Unfortunately we left our trade items back in the car, but we took Harley's Mouse from the cache and will move him along to another one later this week.

BTW We took so many pictures yesterday that I didn't put them all in the blog post. The highlighted words are links to the photos or other useful information.

Geocaching Trip to the Coast

We were planning to go to the beach on Sunday, but Sami read the weather report Saturday morning and decided Saturday would be better. We took the direct route - Hwy 26 to Cannon Beach. We've done most of the geocaches on that route on other occasions, but there are still a few.

The first one we tried was at a viewpoint. The clouds were covering Mt. St. Helens, so we didn't see it, but we ate some thimbleberries and took pictures of some roadside wildflowers while we waited for other cars to leave. Unfortunately we didn't find the cache there, better luck next time.

We found the next cache (TweedleDee Tweedle Dum) with no problem. Sami was hungry, so we started looking for a place to eat. There is a restaurant on Hwy 26 called Camp 18. It's kind of a tourist spot with a giftshop and a small logging museum, but the food was pretty good and reasonably priced. I don't know why we didn't take any pictures of the machinery. There was also supposed to be a cache there, but we couldn't find it. I got an email from the cache owner today saying he checked it and it's missing.

After lunch, we stopped and found a tiny little micro cache near the Klootchy Creek Giant Spruce tree. We've taken our picture several times with there tree in the past, but now it is falling down and people are not allowed underneath it.

There were tiny little fish in the creek and tons of these cool water bugs.

After that we attempted a few geocaches at Hug Point State Park where we had so much fun scrambling around on rocks that we forgot to take very many pictures.

There was a very cool little waterfall right on the beach and some interesting caves.

I'm standing on top of the waterfall here.

The weather was actually pretty hot. We saw more people at the beach on Saturday than we ever have. It's pretty unusual to see so many people daring to go into the Pacific ocean without a wetsuit.

On our way back to the car, Sami said "Look, the birds found a fish, poor fish." So I looked, but it wasn't a fish. It was bag of chips. The birds had already gotten the bag open by the time we arrived, so it never occurred to us to shoo them away. We sat there watching the seagulls and crows fight over the chips, sneaking around and trying to steal them from each other for quite a while.

Next we went to Oswald West State Park. The path from the parking area to the beach is fairly long, half a mile or so, but it is amazing. Truly a walk through the rainforest to get to the ocean.

Oswald West also seems to be a favorite with the surfers. You can't see them in this photo, but there were maybe 50 surfers out there.

All in all, it was a great trip to the beach. The weather was nice and we found some interesting new places. We also found a total of 6 geocaches out of the 12 we searched for. Next time I'll have to take more pictures of the rocks we climbed and of the path through the rainforest to the coast. The campground at Oswald West is very nice - I'd love to spend a weekend there sometime and explore some more.