Sumpter Valley Oregon
June 17, 2007.
We are staying at Mountain View Travel Park in Baker
City, Oregon. $24.79 FHU, shade and a nice enough RV-Park.
It must be a former KOA (Keep On Adding) since they charge extra for
everything, $2 extra for wifi, $2 extra for larger sites, you get
the picture Keep On Adding.
Roadcut between Baker
City and the Sumpter
Valley in Oregon
Our drive from Baker
City to Sumpter
along SR 7 took us from the Baker
Valley to the Sumpter
Valley, deep in the Blue Mountains. Spectacular roadcuts like
this were common between the valleys.
Three gold dredges operated
in the Sumpter
Valley, on and off, from 1913 to 1954. Periods of dredging
activity were influenced by the fluctuating prices of gold, the Great
Depression, the Second World War, and equipment breakdowns. The dredges
dug up 2,500 acres of farmland extracting approximately $10,000,000
in gold.
Unique east Oregon fence arrangements
I am intrigued with this method of fencing that seems to be an Oregon
specialty.
We watched a pair of osprey on this nest. One must have been sitting
on eggs since we did not see any chicks.
Joyce spotted
this nesting platform along Mason Reservoir in the Sumpter
Valley.
Sumpter
Valley Steam train tracks & Station
These are tracks for the Sumpter
Valley Steam train that operates on weekends and holidays
during the summer. We did not take the train ride but did see it chugging
through the valley with a load of tourist.
Beautiful pastures are dotted throughout Sumpter
Valley.
In one pasture we spotted these sandhill cranes. To begin with we
thought they were some other species of crane since we had never seen
sandhill cranes with this brown coloring.
Sandhill cranes and chick in Sumpter
Valley
They were indeed sandhill cranes they just weren't the color we are
used to seeing.
Look closely at the picture on the left you can see a small chick
following this adult.
While we were watching a group of calves started chasing one of the
adult cranes. It was funny to see calves chasing a crane. When the
crane tired of the game it headed to the barbed wire fence and with
one bound jumped over it then turned around to watch what happened.
Mike & Joyce Hendrix
Mike
& Joyce Hendrix who we are
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