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Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Road Trip, Day Six

See the end of this post for info about this photo.

This was day six of my road trip with my daughter Becky. We started off in Bend, Oregon, where we had spent the night.

Bend is a sophisticated mountain city with a pretty downtown.



Yesterday's blog post showed the Three Sisters shrouded in clouds. Today was clear as we left Bend, and the Three Sisters came out in all their glory.


Next stop: the High Desert Museum, about 10 miles south of Bend.


We started with the raptor show, featuring birds of prey including a red tail hawk, barn owl, great horned owl and gyrfalcon. It was a bit of a hike to this area but was well worth it!

Here's a gyrfalcon (pronounced jeer-falcon) flying over onlookers toward a perch.


We also visited the Miller Family Ranch and Sawmill on the museum grounds. Here a woman in costume (and in character) educates a young girl about the operation of a spinning wheel.


Exhibits inside the main buildings are much more sophisticated than what we anticipated.



The museum is in the Deschutes National Forest. Only YOU can prevent forest fires!


We were there for a couple of hours, then continued south to Klamath Falls, a city whose name we decided is false advertising. We went to the Klamath Visitor and Convention Bureau and were informed that there are no falls.

None at all.

There are small rapids in the Link River, which are accessed by going out the back door of the visitors center and walking a mile and a half round trip to see, er, not much.

We passed.

However, the visitor center, which includes Chamber of Commerce offices, has about a dozen pelican statues painted by a local Native American woman. I found them quite interesting.


Soon after, we crossed the border into California and continued south until we reached tonight's destination: Alturas in the northeast corner of the state in Modoc County.

Alturas is in the middle of nowhere. Here's a photo from the highway about a mile from the city:


But they have a Best Western and an Italian restaurant, so that's something. In fact Antonio's Cucina Italiana delivers, and our dinner just arrived (Becky's having spaghetti and meatballs and I'm eating lasagna).

Tomorrow? Who knows? That's why this road trip is called an adventure!

In the top photo, a red tail hawk flies right over Becky and me. I almost caught it all, but not quite.

5 comments:

  1. That's a lot packed into one day. My picks would be the pelicans (wow--wonderful) and maybe, just maybe, Alturas. Sometimes I like being in the middle of nowhere.

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  2. Those pelicans rock.

    Can't believe it about the falls--too funny.

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  3. Petrea and Jean, now I regret that I didn't take photos of all of them.

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  4. Excellent reporting, Travel Information Officer!

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  5. Good - you got sun. Your on the desert side of the range. That would be interesting and maybe affordable - for my how to be old years

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