A trip to Roaring River County Park

After finding out what an undiscovered little gem of a park that the Aumsville Ponds were, I decided to check out Roaring River County Park in Linn County. As this county park will be featured next month on my other blog, Mid-Willamette Explorer, I will just post some of the photos I took. If there is no name below a flower, it is because I have yet to identify it. Many of the flowers in the park are ones that I have never seen before.

My favorite photo of the day

My second favorite photo of the day.

The forest is reclaiming the table.

My third favorite photo of the day.

This flower is not in my plant book.

 Himalayan Blackberry - Invasive Species

 I believe this is part of the carrot/parsnip family

 Oceanspray

 This might be a species of Forget-me-not

Mock-Orange

Fog across the field

This morning there was a small layer of fog at the back of the field behind my house, so I figured I would get a picture of it while I went about doing the morning chores.

1,000 views

I figured that I would put up a few statistics once this blog had 1,000 views.

My first blog (Beaver Country Ramblings)

15.5 months
70 posts
1,002 views

My second blog (Travels of Oregon)
5.5 months
62 posts
660 views

My third blog (Mid-Willamette Explorer)
1.5 months
9 articles
396 views

I would like to say thanks to all my readers, especially the ones who wait for me to post something new.

Trapper's Encampment at Champoeg State Park

After getting lunch yesterday at the Burning Boar BBQ, which will be featured on Mid-Willamette Explorer next moth, I headed to Champoeg State Park to check out the Fur Trapper's Encampment event. Those that hosted the event were clad in pioneer-era clothing and featured anything from old-style canvas tents to flintlocks. Out of all the items that were shown off, my favorite was the hand-mad birch bark canoe which used white cedar boards to line the inside. Below are some of the photos from the event.

 This guy is making sparks with flint

 

This guy is making round bullets the old way.

Rooster Rock Hike

In Oregon, we have two Rooster Rocks. One is in the Columbia River Gorge, the other is near Cascadia State Park. It is the one near Cascadia, that I went on with a group from Meetup.com earlier today. Living up to it's temperate rainforest status, is rained well over have the time on the trail, but us Pacific Northwesterners are used to the rain. If you love difficult hikes, this one is for you; but if you are like me, and have hip or knee pain after walking a few miles on flat ground, this is definitely not for you. Nor is this for hikers that normally hike less than 8 miles on relatively flat ground.

With the combination hip pain and steep ascent, the 6.6 mile trail was a real pain compared to Silver Falls State Park's Trail of Ten Falls. But at this time of year, there was enough flowering plants that madei t worthwhile to me. Some of the pictures are as follows:

Bear Grass

 Oregon Iris

Three-leaved Anemone

 Pacific Rhododendron

 False Solomon's Seal

Pacific Madone (the tree that sheds it's bark)

Rooster Rock through the trees

Linn County Lamb & Wool Festival

I first heard about this festival near the end of last summer, so I figured I'd give it a look-see this year. Each day, it has different events going on, such as a parade down the main street of Scio. I arrived shortly after the parade and parked in a church parking lot a few blocks away from all the action. My first target was the Junior High School gym that was where they had quilts, as I like to look at the geometrical ones.  Below are a few of my favorites:

 

The next stop was where the main part of the fair was held to look at the animals and check out the booths. Unfortunately, I didn't see any sheep at that time and the booths didn't carry anything of interest to me.

After moseying around for a while at this place and that, I went across the creek to see the wool show only to find out that they wouldn't start until 7:00 p.m. and it was entirely vacant. So no lambs or wool, save for the lamb burgers that a booth was selling. Some festival this turned out to be, I was under the impression that sheep and wool for sale were going to be there the whole 3 days. Before deciding to leave as it was raining, I went across the street to check out the old tractors next to the Scio Veterans Memmorial.

Diamond Lake fishing trip

Saturday, two days ago, I went fishing at Diamond Lake, a popular lake in the Oregon Cascades flanked by two mountains on each side. One of these mountains, Mount Thielsen, has always been one of my favorite mountains due to it's shape. The other is Mount Bailey, which is somewhat dome-shaped. Anyway, now that the Tui Chub is once again eradicated from the lake, the fishing is great. Although it took me five hours before I finally landed a Rainbow Trout that was of average size, other people were catching them quite often. Some of the trout that were caught were 20 inches or more! Overall, it was a good day to go fishing at the lake. A pair of Bald Eagles came over around noon to give us a show as they attempted at grabbing a trout from the lake. In all my years at going to Diamond Lake, I have never seen Bald Eagles there before. It is nice that they are making a comeback

 Mount Bailey in the morining

 Mount Thielsen in the morning

 Reflection of Mount Thielsen

Bald Eagle (center) 

Mount Thielsen in the afternoon

New pigs and the retiring of three steers.

First off, the steers that we had are no more. The company I work for butchered them in February. So since they are no longer around, I am moving their picture from the main page to this one.
 

 Amos the Angus

 Charley the Charlet

 Harry the Hereford

Secondly, here are the new pigs my parents got the other day. They will be raised and sold to family and friends. No names have been given to them yet.