Leaving the Gold

A few days ago, we had at least four kinds of weather before noon.  One of them was a clearing sky with a beautiful rainbow  about15 minutes before clouds returned and we had a couple of minutes of light rain.

Rainbow over Malheur Lake

I raced out to get the picture of the rainbow showing the gold in Malheur Lake and then went on to work.  Later I had to go back to my house to get some of the things I'd left behind in the rush.  But I started thinking about the promise of the rainbow and how I had really gotten the gold ring when I was accepted to work here. I had some of the most enjoyable jobs I've ever done, including designing activities on pollinators and then sharing them with the Paiute Indian kids, producing a Power Point show that introduces the refuge, and working many hours on collecting bees, pinning bees, and working on a bee display. And I have made golden friendships here and hope to work with some of the volunteers here or at other refuges.

Shades of gold have been one of the main colors here in the desert.  Now, even the wetland grasses are golden. Some of the trees are also turning golden. And the wildlife is golden too, in the sense of  riches.

Here is a retrospect of my favorite pictures of the golden place. .  Many of them have golden colors and the rest represent the riches of Malheur. 

Our famous cottonwood tree on Central Patrol Road

The oh-so-entertaining Chicogoans, AKA California quail.

The first bumblebee I met up here

One of thousands of yellow-headed blackbirds that came to breed here

Monkey flower showing its nectar guides - the red spots.

Willow blooms- for feasting bees, flies, and beetles

Black-headed grosbeak getting grape jelly snack

Singing bobolink

Headquarters fawns on one of their first  forays away from Mom

Black-crowned night heron.I woke him up and he's a little indignant

Hungry deer eating from my willow tree

One of our breeding sandhill crane pairs

There is also dross here. Malheur Lake has been so degraded by  invasive carp that it can only support  about ten percent of the historic numbers of waterfowl and waders. I came back from my vacations to find almost no water or birds in the wet fields.. And there are very few birds on Malheur and Mud lakes. But the good news is that the refuge is working with other partners to learn ways to control the carp in all of Harney Basin and there is lots of research going on to determine all the ways they can get the upper hand with the carp. I'm hoping that our pot of gold will be carp numbers greatly reduced and maintained, the turbidity in the lake cleared up, and food needed by  the ducks, geese, swans and native fish once more able to get enough light to grow. This will make this place a golden  stopover for birds in the fall, as well as in the spring.

I'm leaving all this gold in a on October 30.  It's always a bittersweet time, looking back at what I'm leaving and looking forward to visiting friends and relatives while waiting to confirm my next assignment. And Lucy is going to ride with me to share adventures and costs so that will be fun.

Yellowstone is Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

The Mary Poppins Song, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, started going through my head about the second day I was in Yellowstone National Park.  By the time we had to leave, that seemed to be the best word to describe it.

Why?

Rainbows in geysers.

 Wonderful wild waterfalls.

Sparkling bubbles.

And bubbles of primeval slime.

Smoking landscapes.

Wildlife.

Mudpots

 Petrified Wood

 And a Natural Bridge

 I've spent several hours processing my pictures and am only about a third finished. Currently I'm in Boise, Idaho and will take Tracy to the airport at 5:00A.M. tomorrow and then will drive to Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. I have to unload my car and retrieve my processions from two sites and move back into the volunteer house before returning to my volunteering job.  But I'll have lots more to tell you about our week of exploring by auto and by foot.

Roamin' with the Buffalo

Dateline: August 30. Hill city, SD

Yesterday I moved my camp to Wind Cave National Park. I'll write about it more in a later post.  I lucked out with the camping fees - only $6 with my golden age pass. (Found a lesser level campsite by the Forest Service that charges $24 a night because they are so close to Mt. Rushmore.) But mainly I've been finding views and wildlife throughout Custer State Park, the largest state park I've found.  It adjoins Wind Cave NP and I had to buy a 7 day pass for $15  just to drive through it and use various of it's day use areas. But it does  have swimming, lots of buffalo and other wildlife and fantastic views. And the north side of it is almost to Mt. Rushmore.  I also drove by Mt. Rushmore this morning but decided it wasn't worth $33 to park and visit that monument so just made two stops to take pictures.

I spent several hours yesterday and today driving throughout the two parks. Below are a few of my favorite pictures from those trips.

The first and second things that caught my eye were prairie dogs and a big buffalo herd. There are several herds in the area - Wind Cave National Park and Custer State Park, and many bulls are found alone in other areas. This herd was visible as I arrived at the park. Prairie dog towns can take up several acres and attract the buffalo to the new, tender grass the prairie dogs cultivate.

Prairie dogs are an important component of prairie ecosystems - provide food and shelter to other amimals

A few of a large herd of buffalo

My afternoon drive came to a screeching halt for several minutes by buffalo who preferred the road

This calf passed my car while I was stopped by buffalo

Found this peaceful threesome at a Forest Service group camp.

This jackrabbit flew off when he saw me

 There is an apparent subspecies of buffalo that must be breeding in the town of Custer, SD.  They are very tame and allow you to approach them closely with no signs of aggression or fear. And they are much more colorful than the species.

Each buffalo was painted by a different artist and with a different theme

I think this was about buffalo hunting

I didn't read the theme of this buffalo

This buffalo was painted in a star theme

Snack time for twins

A pronghorn buck

Custer State Park has an entire magazine-sized booklet about the park. It says the burros ae descendants from the herd that once hauled visitors to the top of Harney peak. Now people bring the food and bread and pet them and they  race over to the cars. I'm hoping to spend more time with the herd because they are foaling now and I hope to get a picture of a newborn.

Panhandling donkey

 Both the National and State Parks have areas that look like this.  I think this was taken just about at the border between the two parks.

Sunset View

These next  pictures were all taken Friday morning on my way to Mt. Rushmore.  I ended up taking a very long way but had a wonderful trip.

Hole in the Wall - I checked - not a through passage

Breakfast time

One of several tiny tunnels in the area

Road View

Some of beautiful formations along Needles Highway Scenic Drive

 There is a terrible pine beetle infestation in these hills. The brown color is from dead pine trees. Every area in under an extreme fire warning. The best sign I saw about fire warnings was " Extreme fire danger - don't even fart in the woods".

View from the top of the Needles Road

Intrepid Biker

Sylvan Lake - one of several lakes in Custer Park

Finally got to see elk after looking for then for two days - this is probably less than half the herd and all very distant

And after sunset, I got a very distant and dark picture of two bucks.

This looks like a painting just before sunset

Friday's sunset over the park.

There is a lot of hiking in the Black Hills National Forest, Custer State Park, and Wind Cave National Park. I'm hoping to get to do some of that yet today and will definitely be hiking the next few days.Some of it will be underground in the 120 mile long cave. (But the trips are mostly about 1.5 miles in length.)