Sandhill Cranes In A High Desert Meadow
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Sighting big Sandhill Cranes in the mountains. Rockhounding on public land. Traveling forest service roads. Finding dispersed camp sites.
Produced by Billy Newman and Marina Hansen
Link Sandhill Cranes In A High Desert Meadow
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152 Billy Newman Photo podcast mixdown Sandhill Crane _2
Hello, and thank you very much for listening to this episode of The Billy Newman photo podcast recorded for the second week of August 2020. I’m out on a camping trip right now, and I’m in the back of my truck on the tailgate at a campsite in the Fremont winnaman National Forest in South Central Oregon. Pretty sure that’s about where it would be. Maybe it’s still Central Oregon. I think it’s, it’s still in the mountain area before you drop into the Great Basin, near the location that I was for the last podcast when I was talking about hanging out near that cabin, near a meadow. And since then, I’ve been driving kind of around through these Forest Service roads, checking out different campsites that are laid out in some areas. A lot of areas up here, I think. I think what I was looking at my watch, and it says we’re about 4900 feet. I think it was about 5200 feet near maybe the higher parts that I was at. But yeah, this is pretty high up here. I think it’s a little snow on the ground in a spot a while back when I was driving a little shady spot that and get it been warmed up, which is weird to see in August. Not much snow out here, though, you know, by any means. So I think I was up here in the springtime in a different area kind of further down and lower and elevation. And I think it was early April. And I could get away ways up the mountain, but I think I got snowed out really quickly before it before you really even break into, you know, the Forest Service roads that are up here. Even the more well-traveled ones just weren’t maintained through the winter. These are gravel roads out here. It’s like a cinder cone that’s cashed up and then spread across the roads, or I think further to the west. They’re still using gravel. I think I crossed over from Klamath County, now into Lake County. As I’ve been making my way, I think on the map app that I’ve got that onyx off-road app that I’ve been using a lot out here, it’s really been a good benefit to have a road map of all these Forest Service roads and all the trails and the terrain and stuff that I’m looking around. But yeah, it really helps to kind of scan around and sees what’s around you and how to get through some places. But I mean, you’ll have just real tiny ATV trails. troublingly though, I think I mentioned, they’re not really totally differentiated with notes on how bad each different road is. It’s just a solid green line. It says you can drive on it. And it might be a well-graded gravel road. That’s why like a highway, or it might be a really small and brushy like overgrown powerline road that kind of cuts along a property line. That’s what I was on yesterday for about a half-hour, and I was thinking, man, I probably would have taken that main way around. If I had realized it would do this. That’s the thing that gets you to because it’ll be a good road for about three miles, you know, or long enough that you’re like, I don’t really want to turn around. And then it’ll kind of gradually creep in and creeping more slowly is I suppose less and fewer people have gone out as far as that to keep the road well-traveled and maintained. But yeah, you get that, that the ruts of the tires. And then you get the center strip where you’re getting like a bunch of seedlings of trees, these evergreen trees that are growing up about two feet, three feet or so and they haven’t really been topped off or knocked over by other trucks go through maybe there’s I don’t know, higher clearance vehicles that go through most of the time. But even in this truck, it’s still just kind of scraped across the bottom of these tiny little seedlings that are all over the place. So I don’t know It’s okay, it’s okay kind of floating around. But I think I made it around like 70 miles or so from the last place that I was camping and I’m now up in the hills at an area out by a big lake. Well, I think it’s a reservoir. And I think this area, there’s like kind of a natural depression, it’s only been 2025 feet lower. But I think what they’ve done is they’ve dammed up an area down from here and then I’ve created a reservoir up here, I think to supply water to the town and farmland that’s down lower in elevation from here, which is kind of cool. It’s interesting how it’s sort of laid out like this up here but I’ve been walking around up here for a little and I think I’m the only person up here in this area. I think there’s a like a forest service campground that’s a little ways over it’s pretty undeveloped too. There’s a I think there’s like I don’t think there’s running water there. But didn’t there’s a boat ramp or something that’s about it. And there’s signs that give me information really out here though. It’s just it’s just undeveloped camping. But there’s a picnic table at the spot. I’m at pretty big Rockpile fireplace with the fire grate over it looks like it was a hunting camp up here. I see, I see a couple log poles that are stretched across a tree at probably 12 feet and eight feet or so. I think that’s what they use when, like in the fall when they start doing their when hunting season comes into effect and I think this area gets a little more flooded out with people that are drawn tags to go mule deer hunting. And I think if they if they fill their tag, then they’ll use these poles to I guess like prep the meat as it’s as you get it back in a camp but it’s a cool little camp it’s a big area to it’s it was a swaying to. There’s like a rope swing with a wood board at the bottom that you sit on. You can swing around a pine tree up here a lot of pine trees wood as lodgepole pine. So that was called. I think that’s what I saw on a sign that said this is an experimental for us and they’re gonna test scenarios, you know, regrowth of lodgepole pine, I think I see what they’re talking about. They’re just real straight, real thin. Not a lot of curvatures and stuff. So I figure like what they do is alright, like a lot of the the White House or you know, polls that we see here are from trees like this. Pretty exciting. Wow. I’ve been walking around out here. It’s still a good bit of trees in this area. But a bit further out for me like I was saying is that lake bed but it’s it’s really dry right now there’s kind of like a creek flowing through part of the center of it. I’m sure. They probably fill it up in the winter time. I gotta remember it’s August two. And if I remember, right, it wasn’t a heavy rain year. Is that true? It seemed really rainy this winter. But if I remember them talking about the watershed, they’re still talking about how it’s sort of a drought year again. Take a sip of my cold coffee that I made up earlier. I got my aeropress hat with me and then I picked up another jet boy Have you had one years ago. Jet bows are like one of the best camping inventions that have been around for a while if you don’t have a good portable stove and you’re going out a lot. It really makes things a lot easier and a lot more comfortable. But yeah, I’ve gone without making a fire anytime this year than in the summer out here. I keep seeing signs. As I’ve kind of learned in the past to that during fire season there’s there’s really like no, no good way. Or at least no legal way to have an open fire pit. You know, like a rock pit with some logs in it, I think is frowned upon up here. I think we’ve had a lot of forest fires and stuff up here. From stuff like that, but yeah, I’ve really kind of tried to avoid making campfires but for circumstances where I feel like I’d really need it in the wintertime I have more fun with that sort of stuff. But what I’ve noticed the most with camping for multiple days and setting up campfires is that is that you really get city and you get dirty a lot faster. Your clothes are kind of impregnated with the smell of like a wet smoke and stuff and I’m not really appreciated the way I feel with that. So yeah, I’ve kind of found that by doing just a couple lighter things. And also by following the fire regulation rules, I can kind of stay a bit more comfortable while I’m out camping and stuff. So I’m not really in the backcountry and I don’t like a big, big expedition hike backpack and deep into the wilderness and anything I’ve got my truck here, I’ve got a cooler, I’ve got a stove and all that stuff. But then even when I’m out camping or backpack and stuff, the Jetboil is just like it’s a pound or last or so I don’t it’s great. It’s just an easy thing to carry and, and, and travel around with. So yeah, lit it up this word made my coffee, I got my aeropress with me, which I think is probably my preferred camping coffee making method if you haven’t had an aeropress it’s probably one of the the easier. And I don’t know it’s been it’s been fine to make a single cup of coffee. Now if you got like four people and you want a lot of coffee the same time, when that’d be a great solution. It’s pretty tough. You can kind of do one cup of coffee at a time for me out here. It works great. You can throw in a scoop it’s kind of like plastic. I think it’s made by aerobie you know that you know when you were in elementary school and you play Frisbee. It was like an arrow B frisbee they make like frisbees, I think they’re like a plastics company and they try and find different uses for these plastics that they’re creating. So I guess at some high temperature plastic, and it’s a coffeemaker Wow. So you get these little filters you throw them in you can probably look it up online to figure out what an aeropress is but I filled up my coffee and stuff and made my cup and my camping cup and threw some half-and-half in there that I had in the cooler and it’s already it’s already cold. So it’s okay. But other camping tools that I found super useful was like I was saying I don’t really have a heater or I don’t have a fireplace that I’m using our you know like a fire ring or I’m not bringing wood with me through this time here but what I did pick up is an is just like a portable propane heater. I’ve seen these used by a couple Other people before, but it’s sort of the size of a briefcase or so. And it’s it takes one of those, this portable green propane pans, you can pick up for three or four bucks at a store. And you throw that in there. Yeah, light the pilot light. And then it’s got this, like ceramic pad that throws off heat. So it’s great to have and that’s really like my fireplace replacement as exciting as that sounds, but it’s pretty safe working really well been really stable and easy to use. But yeah, I got my tailgate down and I’ve got that like heater going in. At night. It’s an it’s about as good as a fire you know, you don’t have any of the the exhaust or the smoke and stuff coming off of it. So it’s a nice clean heat source and stuff. And it’s fun to if you want to move you’re like oh, you know, I like my cat. But let’s walk out over here like what I did last night is a shut the heater off. While I was after I made dinner and I sit in my truck. And then I walked out probably about 100 yards into that open area as you get near the edge of the lake bed. And then I sat down over there and then kick the heater on again. Boom. I’m set up and hanging out and warm. And yeah, it gets cold up here at night. Really, I think the last couple of days have been kind of chilly. Well, least like yesterday was pretty cold for I don’t know what day in August. You think it’d be? You think it’d be a hot one. But yeah, it was pretty, pretty cool. Yesterday, I think it was probably like 73 degrees as a high. It was really comfortable. Or I appreciated that as opposed to the heat like I was I was knocked out by the heat. I think it was like around 100 when I was out in the john de area a few weeks back. And man Yeah, it was just wiped out by that. But it was 100 degrees. I’m driving around my truck with the windows down and I have AC in this thing. And I just like I have this mask, right? It’s a gator. Yeah, everybody’s got a mask nowadays. So I’ve got one of these Gators. And I would just constantly be like dunking that and ice water. And then like using that to cool off. But man, yeah, throwing that around your neck when it’s covered in ice water is a great way to cool off. I think that was like some, I don’t know some like gimmicky product back in the early 2000s was something like that where you’d you’d fill up like some something wrapped around your neck and it had ice cubes and water in it. You go on a walk and stay cool in the summer. Now that’s super cool coffee. But yeah, having this heater out here has been great going out to anywhere you want setting up a chair, set up a heater, it’s a pretty comfortable way to do some stuff. And it works well for doing some photo stuff too, because you can just kind of take off from where you’re at, take your camera bag, take this little heater, and then set up your tripod. Sit down said it became a staff get your shots ready for like that evening time. Because you can sit there pretty comfortably and just you know, stay warm and stay pretty comfortable. And I wouldn’t really take it too far out, you know if I was if I was traveling pretty far. But if it’s if it’s just kind of like a short, short little jaunt down to a spot where I’m fishing are where I’m going to be taking some photos. It seems like it’s been working pretty good for that sort of stuff. But yeah, kind of fun having a couple of things around, I brought to bear a few other things, but I don’t know, I’ll probably get into the other camp stuff later. It’s been pretty smooth though, keep it out here and traveling around. I’ve been trying to do some more rock counting stuff. I was learning about some of the privileges that you have on public lands to do rock counting. It’s cool you can look this up yourselves too but I think there’s like rock counting. It’s like the hobby of going around and collecting interesting rocks that you find you know out while you’re traveling around and so legally you still get to pick those things up from public land areas, unless there’s some specific restriction in that area. But yeah, you can go around and do rock counting all you want so I think it’s its most common stones that you can you can just pick up with no, or you know, just you’re right on public land to pick up the rocks he come past so it’s been kind of cool going around and picking up appearances in a bunch of city and in raw form stuff, which is pretty cool. coming across some Jasper’s some agate supports some petrified wood. That’s been cool. I think last week I found a chunk of petrified wood when I was walking around and I thought hey, nice cool like this. And there’s some areas in Oregon where there’s more of that than others. I think it was part of part of the land development of how I guess how much wood would have been trapped quickly under mud. Is that what it is? I don’t know. There’s some there’s some like specific process of how petrified wood gets created from really old trees and you know how that that mineral change happens. So I was learning about agate to agates from wood also I didn’t really understand this, I think agates from when a piece of wood is buried in lava from a volcanic flow, someone that knows about rocks really would probably be able to tell me more quickly. But I think from something I was understanding recently, if you don’t listen to it, check out the meat eater podcast, there’s a bunch of really good stuff on there. I think it’s hosted by Steve rinella. And they normally have like some really good guests on to talk about. Most of the time, it’s through the focus, or through the lens of like hunting trips and stuff. But really, I’ve learned so much about like outdoors outdoor management. And then you know, including stuff like this, like rock counting, and geology and all sorts of like intersectional ideas that are about the outdoors and outdoorsmen ship. So really appreciate it kind of some of the things I’ve learned from that. But one of the things I learned from that from an episode, I think maybe back in early May was about some rock counting stuff that they were doing, where they were going out looking for agate. And I think they were out in the Yellowstone valley where they were looking for agate, one of the things that they explained is from one of the the old Yellowstone eruptions, there was a flow of magma that covered a forest or you know, a lot of trees. And then what would happen is that once that wood was encased in magma, the wood the carbon would burn away, and then it would leave a pocket where that wood had been. And then over a long amount of time, water groundwater would seep into that pocket, and then evaporate out. But as it would seep in, it would bring a certain set of minerals in it. And then as that mineral deposit would build, it would build an agate. And that’s how you get these agate stones, I have this one at home. That’s that’s it looks like, it looks like an onion almost or like if you’ve ever seen the cross section of a really big piece of hail is sort of like that, where it’s got all these different layers to it that have been created at different times at different stages as it developed. But it was pretty cool. Yeah, going around and try and find some agate. And really cool stuff are really, really cool colors really cool. Like, just the clarity of some of them is awesome. It’s really cool. I think a little further out from here, you can start finding opal, which is cool, I don’t think I’ve really found a lot of opal. I’ve heard a lot about that. In the i think i think it’s more common and more popular like out in Nevada, I think like north-western Nevada is pretty common for finding opal, or deposits of opal rocks in that area. And that’s sort of similar to an agate, at least in look of that kind of clear, Crystal Levy, look of Iraq, which is always fun to find that I’ve been traveling around up here, and it’s kind of High Country up here. But I’ve been traveling around and yeah, trying to do some rock counting stuff, trying to pick up some different things. And you really can find a lot if you’re keeping your eyes to the ground and picking up pieces and chips and chunks of different rocks. And Stephanie you kind of collect through them and see what you got and what you want to keep and stuff. But as I was understanding the rules are rock counting, you can get into I think it’s 25 pounds of rock a day from BLM land across Oregon. And I believe it’s 10 pounds of rock per day from national forest land, really, it’s a lot of rock. Also, in addition to that you can pick up 125 pound or more specific specimen from I think each location. So like if you find like one big rock that’s out 50 pounds or 30 pounds or something like that you can you can take that rock as well and not be in violation of your rockhounding picking limits. Pretty, pretty fun. But it’s cool. Yeah, you can go around and pick up a lot of stuff. And I think it’s with a maximum of 250 pounds collected from each property management location through a year. So you can pick up 250 pounds of rocks over the course of a year. And I think you can’t do that in a day, I suppose. Some information sort of sort of states both things, so I’m not really sure which one it is but from what I understood from looking at the National Forest Service website, I think there’s some information about rockhounding in Oregon, and some of the areas that I was going to be I was 25 pounds a day on BLM 10 pounds a day on national forest land and that and yeah, that’s cool. That’s a lot. You can also go around and pick up firewood which I didn’t really know about. You need like a permit in some circumstances if you’re trying to collect it commercially. But if you’re collecting it for private personal use, even just like home use, there’s a lot of wood that you can pick up from managed public lands. Some I think there’s like some specific areas where they want you to be doing that and some specific areas where they don’t want you to be doing that. I think if it’s Well, I’m not sure not all downed would but I think if if, if it’s down and it’s collectible, I think you can collect that in a lot of areas. So yeah, I went through like in the springtime I went through an area of BLM land and I filled up my truck with with a bunch of logs that had been taken down and I think stacked up in an area and yeah, I just loaded up my truck and I have firewood for a while you can get like a I think you can get it’s it’s a limit similar to the Rock County so you can get like a couple cords of wood a year and collect that for personal home use I think if you’re trying to sell firewood then you have to go through the BLM or the Forest Service to get a permit for the area where you’re going to be doing wood cutting I’ve only just picked up down wood that you pick up kind of like for campfire so it’s like you know if you’re going around trying to pick up firewood for camp it’s kind of a similar process to that I’m not really like cutting down on fresh trees and aging them but but there’s there’s a qualification for that too. You can go around and if it’s a specifically designated area for that kind of thing. You can go around and actually you know, use a tool and cut down a tree and process it and take it home and cover up your stump or something like that. And you know naturalize the stump that you cut but but yeah, there’s there’s a lot of stuff you can do out on public land I wasn’t really quite quite aware of in every way. But yeah, it’s been cool being out here. Doing some rock counting stuff, trying to find some, some cool pieces. Really a lot of obsidian is what I’ve been finding, which has been fun. A lot of a lot of like volcanic rock stuff out here. And some of them are cool, you know, but they’re not that. Like they’re not like a gem or anything. It’s just like, you know, a basalt stone from a volcano. But it’s cool. Yeah, these rock counting stuff has been pretty good. Oh, what was the other stuff I wanted to talk about. So I think I saw what we’ve been seeing. I saw a helicopter. There’s a thunderstorm. That was like when I was last doing a podcast right so there was like a big time thunderstorm that was rolling through that last camp that I was at when I was podcasting and then rained a bunch after that vows nice. Stayed nice and dry and pretty warm and tracking the truck canopy and stuff waited out the rain then it cleared off just like a couple hours later is that that thunderstorm system moved past us and then got cleared off got cold got pretty cold. I layered up and I walked out into that field now with a ton of wet grass and stuff. walked out there brought the heater like I was talking about and posted it up out in that Meadow to check out the stars and stuff from that you can see Scorpio almost all a Scorpio it’s really cool when you got a strong Southern view of the sky. And for Miss area in Oregon you can’t quite see the dip in the tail of Scorpio is a kind of scoops down and it comes back up with the stinger at the end. You just barely or I get out you can you can definitely imagine how it kind of scoops around but yeah, at where it is now. This time in August. I think it’s it’s kind of tipping over and gone. not visible. And that spot but I think I see. Was it Jupiter? You see just past Sagittarius as you’re looking to the south. Then near that just a little bit further over to the east on that same ecliptic line you see Saturn. I think they both near the position where they’d be at opposition. They’re not as bright as they were a few years ago, you notice, but they’re still really bright. Really cool to see. And then if you stay up late enough, maybe around midnight or so. You’ll see Mars rise over on the eastern horizon. And it looks real real coppery red and really noticeable really cool. But I think it came up right about the same or about an hour or so after the moon rose last night. So tonight or probably rise along the same location as Mars. That’s interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Would those cool, check it out that stuff. And I was checking it out the other night after that thunderstorm out in that field. So it’s kind of fun, kind of staying up and check it out some stuff. But then I went to bed. And then I got up the next morning and this was what was really cool. As I looked out the field. I hadn’t really seen any animals out there. I heard a few a few birds like a raven, and a couple other things. I think I heard a turkey gobble. Not sure though but I looked out looked across the field and I saw that two of the biggest birds I have ever seen. There. They are the biggest birds I’ve ever seen. I’m really not sure what it is it looks like similar to Blue herring, so I figured some kind of herring, maybe it’s a crane. But I would, I would guess if it was standing up, it would be almost four feet tall. It really looked like a small deer or a dog, like in mass and size, as you know, kind of like the feathery body if it wasn’t popped up in a big way, but there are two of them. And yeah, it looked like dinosaurs out there. In this middle of this field. I’ve never seen a bird like that it looked like like a blue herring. That was about twice a day I see a buck. It’s at my two o’clock walk into my three o’clock. 1.2 point 3.4 point. It’s a two or three point buck. It doesn’t see me. That’s cool. Little buck cruising through. I think it’s a mule deer out here. I sound like a group of mule deer down in the lake bed this morning. And when I started wrestling around, they they all kind of started run or one of them kind of got excited and then ran off there. They’re probably like two or 300 yards from me. And I pulled up the binoculars as scouten Yeah, they’re just booking it across this open lake bed. And then they got tired and stopped and started eating grass like almost right away. So it’s kind of funny how they they kind of move around but yet this guy’s like no. What? 200 feet walking around can’t cool, dude. Thanks for camping with me. What is this in two giant birds. I saw these two giant birds Thunderbirds. They’re awesome. They’re Brown, kind of Sandy tan colored. And they had like a beaked face like a real pointy beaked face really similar to a blue herring. It looked like it looked like an emu or an ostrich or something out in this field. It was diet. But it looked I’d say like I’ve seen a lot of blue herrings, they’re way more slender than this. This really had that kind of big kind of round full body thing and then had that crane neck that kind of the s curved crane neck and it was just kind of on the ground walking with its buddy. And they were cruising around poking at the ground trying to get grubs or whatever. But But yeah, really cool to see him and then so I was watching them for a bit I had him in the binoculars I think I got a couple pictures. But like I was explaining that last podcast smartly. I have a wide angle lens with me, which is you 17 to 40 millimeter so as way out super wide. So you just so you know, no telephoto my back. So didn’t get the wildlife shot. That would have been cool, which is fine. And I accept but I did get a couple pictures of it that probably poorly show two big things out in the distance. And I mean, it looks like it could be dogs could be deer. Or it could be birds. So it was pretty awesome to see. But as I walked out a little bit, I exposed myself into the sunlight. They got they got side of me and then they they both let out these for like maybe 30 seconds to a minute or so. They both just kind of stood around and made these sort of warning or territorial croaks. These like these like three beat croaks that would just echo across this whole this whole valley that are this whole Meadow area that I was in it just carried on four acres. They’re probably like an acre or two away from me at that time. And yeah, they just let out these loud croaks kind of morning that these up, standing dude predator out in the distance. But yeah, then they kind of sorted it into flight, but they just kind of started back off up into the hill, up into the tree line. And then I tucked back myself back up into the tree line by my truck, made another cup of coffee that morning, and then I saw him kind of pop out again and poking around that. That Meadow again, but it was really cool giant birds, I really would say they’re like four feet tall. Body Mass section, it seemed like about two feet or so. And you know, like kind of on their leg, maybe 24 inches off the ground. Yeah, it just seemed like a really big bird. If I was standing right next to it. I’d be like, Whoa, man, this is this is a real critter. So it was fun. I’ve never seen a bird like that out there before I’ve heard about. Some of those are some birds like that before I remember hearing like, it’s like a ground colloquial family story that I think like a great uncle of mine had had probably similar to this area too, which is interesting. I like that. But he said that he had woken up one morning and looked out and saw these prehistoric looking Thunderbirds he called him and I think I had an experience like a two. I think it was fun. I’m sure it’s totally a normal animal. It’s probably used to be around a lake or something. You know, that’s sort of what it seemed like is just like a giant Pelican or crane or something that you would see out by the ocean, but to see how You’re just walking around sagebrush in a field in a meadow at 730 in the morning, it’s just like, Wow, look at that. I thought I’d see a deer out there, but no giant birds. So that was really cool. Never seen any, any birds like that before that was fun later in the day saw a few Hawks. Those are cool to see they were watching me. I came out here to this reservoir area, and there is an area where there’s water that’s backed up, but I saw an osprey fly out over real high, probably 100 feet up above the water, then it kind of kind of did these tight circles. And then it did this big kind of quick drop with its wings still out back but kind of kind of braced drops down about 30 feet did another circle and that tuck those wings in and Dove straight boom down in the water spash grab the fish look like a three inch or four inch Sunfish. And that aspect grabbed it, crushed it and bolted off to its its tree branch perch to have lunch. It was really cool. I love watching this Ospreys fish, it’s really interesting to see their their behaviors and stuff. You’ve got an osprey and are like, you know, like a bird of prey like that. And now it operates in juxtaposition to other birds that we see their behaviors that more commonly. And it’s just really interesting to see, like how they operate, how they work and sort of their I don’t know, their attitude of their behavior is just kind of interesting. Or just seemed like really present. You know, like, I think they say that, like eagles are carrying eaters. Is that what it is? So there’s sort of like a vulture where they’ll eat dead things. I think hawks do that a bit too. But hawks, hawks will pass. I think hawks like to pounce on mice stuff, but you never see a hawk fish, like I see ospreay fishing all the time, it’s just really cool to see that kind of connection, or that kind of that kind of development between their ecosystem of an osprey knowing instinctually knowing from its parents that, you know, it’s because they nest the nest really like for a long time. So you need to have those big nasty return to those nests instead of the giant, wide nest and the snags. And they’re just like really impressive lifecycles they’ve gotten but it was cool. Check it out. smartspace always something I like that additional to that. I saw a helicopter cruise by like I’ve seen there’s a lightning storm just the other day. So I guess it must have started fire somewhere out here. But I saw this helicopter cruise over right near the reservoir that I’m at. I was a couple miles away from at the time, but I saw a reservoir come or I saw a helicopter fly over the reservoir with a big bucket hanging from it. And I watched it to a cycle of like two drops or it wouldn’t drop here but it would scoop up water from this reservoir and then fly out to wherever beyond my distance wherever it needed to go to dump on this fire. putting out fires with the helicopter. It was cool to see but yeah, it was really wow. No way the helicopters cruising right here, picking up a scoop of water and then bolting it over to wherever that fire needs to go out. But it was a trip to see that it was cool. I wonder what that be like to be you know that, Hey, you got your firefighter but with the helicopter, it’d be a trip to be like, well, let’s ramp up the helicopter. And it’d be a weird to be a pilot to do that. You know, like I hear about being a helicopter pilot, but I just think it’d be really strange to be hovering. Drop a big sack into the water. And then boom, scoop up hundreds of pounds gallons and gallons and gallons of water. I mean water is heavy, right? You know, so you have to like think about that. But then scoop up all that change how you’re flying to adjust to all the new weight that you’ve added to the to the vehicle that you’re flying in while you’re flying it. That’s what I think it’d be strange if you load a vehicle or something and then you’ve got that weight in it and then you fly that around. But as you’re riding a light vehicle like a light helicopter, cruising down picking up big, like 1000 pounds of water actually can’t pick that up but picking up all the water that it can and then lifting off and taken off again that just be so strange to fly around the mountains picking up picking up big buckets of water and then dropping it on fires. It just seems like a weird way to spend your days out here in the high desert. But I’m sure it’ll be probably some cool stories. I don’t know. Yeah, cool stuff to see that helicopter. cool to see. This Thunderbirds cool. Do some rockhounding cool. See some mule deer cruising around out here saw that bug Oh, endless chipmunks. I see chipmunk perched up getting some sign right now. Nice. But yeah, endless. Endless chipmunks. Many squirrels no mosquitoes at all. That’s been great man. I got beat up by mosquitoes up in the Cascades. I think last week I’m still kind of nursing my way back to health from that. That really hurt. It’s x those mountain mosquitoes, when they’re held by those bogs and marshes and lakes leftover from the snow melt. And it seems like now in July and August is when they’re really just getting going. But man, they’re brutal, hungry mosquitoes. And I hit myself a deep a couple times. it slowed him down. But man, I could have used 50 or so last mosquito bites that day, that’s for sure. So, yeah, good times, but have fun, get beat up by mosquitoes, but but not on this trip. So I’m having a good time. I think it’s a little colder this time too. So that’s probably part of what’s dampened down the number of mosquitoes and really out here in this higher desert area, I think you get a little lucky with mosquitoes if you’re not around like a pretty heavy body of water. So in a lot of areas I’ve been it’s been pretty dry. So are you it’s like pretty far away from a lake and pretty far away from like, a bigger river or Creek source, that’d be a mosquito swamp. So thank goodness, I’ve stayed away from that for a little bit. But having a good time out here, I’m going to be driving around for a good part of the day, checking out some more Forest Service routes. And looking at this map, there’s just so many areas you can go from you can spend, you could probably go I could probably go down into Nevada, I you know, I’d cross a couple highways or something. But you could probably drive all the way down in Nevada, mostly just taking these Forest Service roads. I think Dan is like the Fremont than the winner. And then you can drop down into the I think Humboldt I think it would be the Humboldt National Forest. Yeah, you can stay out on these back country roads and stay off the I mean, you know, there’s no towns or houses or anything on here. So I think just about everything is a bad country road. But you can stay on those and get down into I don’t know Nevada, or Northeastern California and spend a bunch of time just kind of tooling around out in this high desert country. So it’s pretty cool. I’ve enjoyed checking it out out here. And I want to try and get back out here and do some more stuff. I think it’s a it’s a good good kind of location before it gets too deep into the fall. And I think this is probably one of the the faster places to get snowed out in in October or October, November, depending on the snow levels that year. I remember being out with my dad, October 17 I think we were camping at an area in Eastern Oregon, really still just kind of the lowland area of Eastern Oregon, where you know you’re not you’re not climbing up real high to a mountaintop or anything like that kind of like where I am now. But it started snowing snowed through the valley snowed all across the highway when for years, we were trying to trying to drive back the blei and a couple inches or something like that. But still, you know for like early October there’s still hunters out there and campers and stuff. And yeah, I just get hit with the the first couple couple inches of snow. It’s good times, but I’m not sure it makes it cool for people that are more used to this now and stuff I’m sure it’s kind of an easy transition when you’re doing some hunting stuff to get out and deal with but man I do not like early season wet snow if it stick in and kind of deal with that. But man that you know, just like after it half hour, it’s just standing water is what it feels like. It’s just that slushy stuff, you can’t even walk in through it all splash now. It’s rough. So I’m glad to kind of avoid that most of the time. But up here in the mountains is cool. Hey, the helicopters back I think you might be able to hear that. I’ll probably noise gate that sound out. But yeah, I hear that chopper flying over and it looks like it’s probably gonna head over to that reservoir again. So again, I’ve had those fires, shoot. But I’m gonna wrap it up here, I suppose. And probably come back with another podcast in the next couple days to talk about more of the summer camping trips I’ve been out on and I think I’m going to try and get home process and photos, process some stuff together and then do a little retrospective about some of the last couple camping trips that that had not yet talked about on the podcast. So thanks for tuning in and listen to me. jabber from my tailgate, high atop the Fremont winnaman National Forest in the mountains by Lakeside camping out. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Billy Newman photo podcast. You can find more information about me at Billy Newman photo comm shoot me a message or feel free to support the podcast to go to Billy Newman photo comm forward slash support, or I think patreon.com forward slash Billy Newman photo if you’d like to help out and send me some bucks to support the travel and photo stuff that I’m up to and what I’m able to put together so it always helps. always appreciate it. But thank you guys very much for bothering to listen. And to check out this episode of The Billy Newman a photo podcast Talk to you next time.