Golden Spike Garage

Toured the Golden Spike Monument locomotive shed while the replica locomotives

 were being readied for the vacation demonstrations of steam power.

 A lot of brass to polish.

 Reassembly

 Tourists crept into the picture.

 Difficult to capture the whole locomotive in the shed.

 One loco is coal powered.

This one is wood powered.  

Wood is split by the local Boy Scouts in the Brigham City, UT area

Baker City

 Boom town during the gold rush years.  Note the cowboy come to town, looking for a good time.

 Many historic buildings.

 Classy hotel

Brick Cafe and Saloon

Great pasta too.

Oregon Trail

Oregon Trail Interpretive Center at the top of Flagstaff Hill.  A lone pine at the top of this hill marked this landmark for the tired pioneers entering the Powder River Valley. 

Then some dufus cut it down.

 Oregon Trail ruts, looking west.

Looking east.

Trail heads west into the valley toward the Elkhorn Mountains.

  Ruts are visible. Great hiking to the bottom of the valley before the thunderstorm arrived.

Shoe Tree

Somewhere east of Mitchell, OR, 

the loneliness of the Oregon desert causes men to 

lose sanity and enter into bizarre and mysterious rituals.

Return to Smith Rock State Park

Great place for climbing, hiking and proposing marriage.

(See earlier post)

We hiked the lower trail on this day.

Life hangs by a thread or in this case multiple ones woven together.

Tuscan villa on the banks of Crooked River along the trail to Monkey Face Rock.

No wildlife was sighted on this visit.

Some rock, I cannot remember the name of it.

Climber in profile.

Good view of little people at Monkey Face's level.

There were two kiosks of stretcher and crutches along 

the trail, helpfully provided by the state park system.  

Our trail begin at a helicopter pad provided for 

an air ambulance.

Sisters Folk Music Festival

I am behind in blog posts.  Will try to catch up with all the travel and fun we have been having.

What a great event the Folk Festival was!  

There was not a bad concert and we saw about twelve or perhaps 

more performances over three days.  Of course it was not just about the music.

While we were in Sisters we looked at maybe trading in the 

camp trailer on a new RV.

Ripley was heard to say, 

" You're gonna need help with this tap.  Perhaps you

should call in the high school buddies?"

While were in Sisters,we were also thinking about getting a new boat,

to go with our new RV. 

Utah Wildlife

Nearly all of these creatures were viewed in the immediate Moab area. One just left a trace around Moab.

Oregonians have to go to Utah and take a boat ride on the Colorado River to see a beaver, their state animal.

Whip tail lizard.  Seemed to be the dominate desert life form.

Tourist girl and a whip tail.

Mystery snake species

Allosaurus track on the ridge above Moab

Perhaps a distant relative of the whip tail lizard.