Fun fall foraging and meandering

John Day Fossil Beds National Monument - Painted Hills

The last few weeks have been extremely busy at work but also busy with play (typical in the Barber-Dimond household). The Tribe that I work for (Swinomish) just recently purchased almost 50 acres of tidelands and wanted me to work up a lot of information on potential uses of these tidelands (i.e. maybe we could grow shellfish?). Pretty exciting but also a bit funny since my background is in benthic ecology and I don't know a thing about farming shellfish! Steep learning curve for Julie at work! Lucky for me, I was about to head to Oregon for a three-day shellfish growers conference. I had been planning on going well before this tideland purchase in order to present some research I had worked on (with several collaborators) involving decadal change in bivalve populations on a gorgeous area of Reservation tidelands. It turns out that in addition to presenting these data, I was also jumping into the world of farming shellfish and I was able to talk to a lot of very experienced growers and learn about the ins and outs of shellfish farming. New and exciting stuff on the job!

I mentioned the shellfish growers conference right? Well it was held in Sunriver, OR which is right next to stunning Bend, OR. Jay and I had been to Sunriver in the winter of 2012 (see this blog: http://jj-adventure.blogspot.com/2012/02/bachelor-oregon-ski-trip-we-had-awesome.html) but had never been there in the summer or fall! Too bad Jay had to work! Well, I guess I was working too - but it was great to work in the Oregon high desert for a few days instead of soggy WA tidelands. I did manage to sneak in some play time though. Lucky for me, our good friend Ralph was recently hired as a shellfish biologist at another tribe in WA and he was also going to the meeting as well. Thw two of us decided to leave a day early and check out the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument before hitting Sunriver and the conference. We had a blast together and I was thrilled to have a driving buddy who really wanted to do all the driving so I could (1) work on finishing my talk for the conference and (2) knit!

It took Ralph and me about eight hours of driving to get to the tiny town of Dayville, OR. What a funny experience. We knew this was going to be in the middle of nowhere Oregon, so we called the only tiny hotel in town around 5pm to ask if we could get a room for the night. The dude that answered the phone was already drunk, slurring his speech, and not thrilled with the idea of us arriving at *shock* 8pm. But he claimed we could call him and wake him up and he would give us a room upon our arrival. Hmmmm. So we arrive - it is raining and dark out and he shows up in a golf cart, whiskey strong on the breath. He attempts to charge my card, the charge appears to go through but he is too drunk to understand this and seems concerned that the charge didn't go through. With much discussion we were able to convince him we paid (and we did pay) and he shows us our awesome little room with two beds and a bathroom. Ralph asked him where we could go to get dinner and he just laughed at us. Ha! There wasn't a light on in this tiny town at 8pm. Good thing I brought beers and some pesto pasta. Ralph and I nuked the pasta, drank some beers, called our respective significant others, and had a good laugh about the drunk dude in the OR desert and hit the beds.

In the morning, our play day, we hit the Sheep Rock unit of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument for a morning hike.The visitor center was closed because of the sequester on Monday (and it has been closed since due to the government shutdown, damn the selfish freakin' Republicans living in the 1600s). But we were able to hike on the trails as these had not been closed. The trails are not that long in any of these units, so we hiked on the longest trail we could find - three miles around a spot called the Blue Basin. You can see why it received this name from the photos above, the clay sediment was very blue/green in color. The entire area was completely stunning and a landscape that rivals Bryce Canyon or other open spaces in the Southwest. We were stoked. But we never found any fossils. Oh well!

Our next stop was the Painted Hills unit in the National Monument. It is easy to see why they named this area "Painted Hills" from this photograph. I could not have dreamt of better lighting on the hills with stormy thunderclouds in the distance and low evening light on the hills. It was amazing. 

There was one spot where you could walk right up to the painted hills....which are really big mounds of clay. We did not touch the mounds, as the park service didn't want us messing with the clay, but it was so neat to be walking IN the mounds of clay. Ralph and I were thrilled!

On our way out to Bend, we noticed tons of blue birds! At first we thought they were swallows since they were in a large flock and the flew like sparrows. But they were too blue. I've consulted my bird book and I'm thinking we saw mountain bluebirds. Do you agree? There are more photos here: https://picasaweb.google.com/111221596171793333099/October2013?authkey=Gv1sRgCOLO-O_-3pr-9gE  Do tell me who you think this bird is!

I was really busy the next three days at the conference and didn't bother to take photos of lots of scientists giving talks in front of a podium! I learned a LOT, had a great time, and enjoyed catching up with many of my colleagues. Ralph and I carpooled back to WA together as well - with only one quick stop on the long drive at Newberry National Volcanic Monument. I have a thing for volcanic landscapes and this place did not disappoint. We were walking about on an old volcanic lava flow. How cool is that!???

Good ol' friends from the Stan Cobb lab days! If you look closely you can see Mt. Bachelor and the South Sister in the background.

Newberry National Volcanic Monument and Mt. Bachelor

 

Massive wind farm on the drive through the Columbia River Valley. Who says renewable energy isn't sexy?

 

The weekend before the shellfish conference Jay and I hit the forest for some mushrooms. Chanterelle season arrived early on the west coast! If anything, we were a little late. We know of a few patches of these beauties and we headed straight to the spots! It was hunting season and we were off the trail, hence our awesome vests. But hey, we didn't get shot and we got tons of chanterelles. Does it get much better than that? Well, it does. We had cream of chanterelle soup that night with a crisp white wine and a rustic sourdough bread. Now that is good stuff.

Orange = chanterelles

After the shellfish growers conference, I arrived back in Anacortes to a treat! Jay's dad was visiting! Buz Dimond also arrived that day and was staying with us over the weekend. Too short of a visit, but a great visit nonetheless! Buz spent the day at work with Jay on Friday while Jay did some boating work and we went to Lopez Island (San Juan Islands) together on Saturday.

Iceberg Point on Lopez Island

Father and son!

Our October is jam-packed with fun. We have a mushroom foraging weekend planned as well as some fun local activities in WA. And we leave in a month for Madagascar! Can't wait!! Not that we have plans yet, but we were never known for planning our vacations. =)