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| ECHO VALLEY ROAD |
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| THREATENING SKY |
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| OROBANCHE |
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| BOONDOCKS ROCKS |
Thursday, 8:30 AM. 62 degrees F, wind W trending to S at upper levels. The sky is mostly filled with black rain clouds, left over from a night of pretty violent thunder and lightening storms, which left a fair amount of rain. It is a quiet morning, except for the cacophony of the large flights of geese that have again passed overhead.
It threatened to storm all day yesterday, but never did. The blue-black skies drew lower and lower on the northern horizon, the winds picked up and again calmed, thunder grumbled, but only a drop or two actually fell. It was an iffy day and gave itself over well to scouring the back country roads for rocks for a small project in the front yard for which a half-dozen potted shrubs await planting.
We made two trips down Echo Valley Road, which runs between Star Route and Hwy 13 west of Bayfield about ten miles. This is about six miles or so of sandy logging road accessing county forest lands. It was recently graded so there were plenty of rocks along the sides of the road free for the taking. This is very often a good wild life viewing road, although even when “improved” by grading it really requires a four-wheel drive vehicle to negotiate it. Joan drove while I got out and loaded up likely rocks. Joan is a good driver and negotiated some rather iffy mud holes and rough stretches with aplomb. Buddy wondered why he wasn’t out chasing grouse. We did see a couple of deer and a coyote but nothing more interesting, I think most animals and birds were in heavy cover waiting out the threatening storm. We met up with a young timber cruising forester and his fine looking Weimereiner. Both dogs were let out of their respective pickup trucks to meet and talk things over. This whole area is good deer and grouse hunting country, as well as bear and wolf habitat, but the cover is very thick and one really has to know the area well to negotiate it. These logging roads are usually not plowed in the winter so one is really on their own. Anyway, I now have plenty of rocks. I think Buddy was frightened by the stormy conditions and the bottomed out barometer, as he was quiet and under my feet all evening.
The roadside raspberry bushes are starting to bloom and it looks like there should be a fine crop of berries in a few weeks. The little parasitic flowering plant, lacking chlorophyll, is one of the broom-rapes, probably in the genus Orobanche, I did not try to key it out any further.
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