Field Trip Part 2

We drove for an hour after lunch to Warner Valley which is east of Lakeview.  The road meanders along Camas Creek through that notch behind the Post Office and is the same Hwy 140 that goes through Klamath Falls, hard to believe.

We gassed up at the Adel Store established 1898 and bought snacks.  A cowboy saundered over to our group and asked if we were interested in taking a look at the BLM Mustang facility about a mile away.

Why not?!  We were already a couple hours off schedule.  This is Beaty Butte Wild Horse  - click on the link for more information on their rehabilitation and adoption of mustangs to keep them out of slaughterhouses.  It was well worth the time we took.

Ian was taking a picture of Joanie and me when we realized we were standing in horse manure.

This is our friends Joanie and David with Ian.  It's a good thing we met them because they invite us to do fun stuff all the time, like this trip!

It turns out that the cowboy who is invited us to visit this rescue operation is Ken Kestner, Lake County Commissioner.  He told us that the county, the largest in Oregon, has a population of about 8,000 and he is one of three commissioners though there are supposed to be four. That means the safety of petroglyphs as well as the Summer Lake Wildlife Area, which has been in the news lately for their work in bringing trumpeter swans back from near extinction - all are in his territory. 

He explained the process in rehabilitating the horses, something he is clearly passionate about.  Andries gave him his card and told him to shoot him an email next time they have an adoption and he'll help publicize it.

The Greaser Petroglyph was our last stop of the day.

The separate piece on the right with the fat lizard was vandalized, then later recovered and placed approximately in the sport where it had been removed from.  These were the best yet, and there are many more sites if we decide on another trip.  Al was making a list for "next time" as we drove back.

It would probably have been 30 minutes shorter had we just gone back the way we came but we voted to go north along Lake Abert, an inland sea remnant, and through Christmas Valley and Fort Rock, home to the largest homesteader museum.  None of us had been there before and I knew Ian and I wouldn't go there on our own. We had left at 8:00 and didn't get back until after 9:00, and though we were exhausted, we were exhilarated. 

Field Trip Part 1

Yesterday Ian and I and four other couples took a field trip into Central Oregon to look at petroglyphs.  The trip was offered through the High Desert Museum and our guild and driver was Andries Fourie, curator of Art at HDM.  We met out in front at 7:30 and were underway shortly after 8:00.

Fort Rock was our first point of interest.  Andries explained that once upon a time this area was an inland sea called Lake Chewaucan and this rock would have risen above the surface as an island.  A similar rock to the left is where sandals were found, dated between 9,000-13,000 years ago. The native peoples lived along the shore of the lake and hunted water fowl so the perimeter of the dried lake bed is a favorite of arrow hunters.

Table Rock is another remnant from the volcanic past.  It's owned by the BLM and you can drive to the top on a dirt road that spirals up around it, although Andries says spots are white knuckle - no thanks.

This is what the lake would have looked like before the Cascades rose up and the climate got drier.  I found an interesting blog post of a father/son trip to the region which goes into more detail which you can read here.

This is the crossing from Silver Lake into Summer Lake and the point of our first petroglyphs.  This is basin and range country so this is the uplifted range between the two basins.

We parked the van and hiked to this spot which is just one rock of many in this area.  No wonder the road sign says Picture Rock Pass, elevation 4,380' and there's no way I would have found this without being led to it.

I worked on the research for petroglyphs of Nevada that were used as part of the interior design of the Spanish Springs Library opened in 2005 and that I retired from in 2009.  I was very surprised at how similar these were to those.  Andries said that actually these primitive drawings are similar all over the world, including South Africa where he is from, and also France.

The figure center right looks like a horse and rider but the dating of all of these figures has been established at around 7.000 years ago.  Horses weren't present in the Americas until after the Spaniards introduced them and the rider was added and dated as later.  Andries showed up how rocks were tapped onto the surface to creating these "etchings."

This is known as the Ana Boulder and is on the shore of Summer Lake, or what once upon a time was Summer Lake.  It like many of these remnants of Lake Chewaucan are dried up alkaline lakes now.  This originally was a large rock, however, in 1980 in straightening a road the county blasted several boulders which had been deep grooved petroglyphs.  Six fragments of these boulders remain.  This was the oldest of our trip.

Our trip was a special arrangement made with Andries by one of our group who is a generous supporter of the museum.  The original trip offered and filled within the same day so Andries agreed to do this as a shake-down cruise.  We were running late by the time we arrived for lunch in Paisley, home of the Mosquito Festival.  The first order of fine-tuning for the next group is to make lunch brown bag.  The rest to follow.....