Field Day

Last Tuesday Jeanne, John and I took a trip from Burns down through the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and stopped at the French Glen Hotel for lunch. The weather was sunny and glorious. We saw sandhill cranes, black neck stilts, avocets, pin tails, mallards, cinnamon teals, pheasants, swallows, and ibis, all paired off for the nesting season. On the way back we came through the Diamond Craters which are old lava flows. In Princeton we stopped at the Round Barn Visitor center for souvenirs and talked to Dick Jenkins, the retired rancher who owns the Center. The Round Barn was standing in water so we didn't wade in. On the road just outside of the visitor's center are pictographs in the rim rock by the highway which are thought to be 4,000 to 6,000 years old. A local cowboy stopped to chat since he doesn't see much but cows all day long. He's sick of of the water and the weather, too.He said his horse has been up to its belly in mud.