All of these images are from a one day drive and illustrates why I love Oregon. Part of the drive was to the Metolius River area on the western side of Sisters, Oregon. It is a beautiful forested area ...
... with one of the main features being fishing...
... in the Metolius River.
It is a very colorful time of year ...
... with a beautiful clear river...
... a great fly fishing and otherwise general store at Camp Sherman...
... and a great bridge for taking pictures...
... from either ...
... side.
The main reason for the trip was to drive The McKenzie Highway Oregon Route 242...
The McKenzie Highway was added to the National Register of Historic Places in February, 2011
It is a spectacular drive on a very narrow road that is only open a few months every year.
You never know what the scenery will be from rock spires in a dense evergreen forest...
... to leaves of gold...
...and sometimes bright red, gold , yellow and green...
... or lava with a forest of both live trees and many long dead snags ...
... that hang around like witches...
... or point to the peaks of the Three Sisters.
Farther along we arrived at the Dee Wright Observatory...
... a tower built on a hill of lava and made from the lava rock.
From the observatory you can see many of the mountains like Mount Jefferson part of the Cascade range rising from the lava field...
... or Mount Washington.
Others seen from the observatory are Belknap, Black Butte, Three
Fingers Jack and the Three Sisters and even the top of Mount Hood.
You might even see a pretty yellow bird in this desolate looking area.
The rock formations are unique and fascinating ...
... as are some of the folks we ran into on the drive like these two women cyclists who we met at three different spots on the drive and who are an inspiration to short ride people like Sharyn and I.
We also stopped at Sahalie Falls a wonderful park on highway 126 where I for a picture of the falls ...
...and followed a trail west to get some pictures of the whitewater below the falls...
... and I do mean White Water..
... but oh so beautiful
There were also some nice looking (not eating) mushrooms.
Now I can't talk because a couple of my pictures were taken from a precarious ledge but us tourists need to be careful and stay on the trail rather than the edge of a 50 foot drop at the top of the falls.
Quote of the Day ~ "nothing is a lost art, unless its a sunken statue...in a river of
lava."
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