If it’s Tuesday, it must be Redmond

So that is where we will end up today, but first, here is a close up of the buckets on that big boy old dredge we saw over in Sumpter.  Imagine all the rocks these buckets drug up!  These would then be run through the sieves in the sluice boxes, sorting, dropping, falling…and the gold would wind up eventually at the bottom box…and make the guys mighty happy, I am sure.

And then all these ‘tailings’ were dumped in huge piles everywhere along the creek beds, with no environmentalists around to insist they be spread around, so there are mounds everywhere, with trees and brush growing haphazardly out of them.  That’s just the way it was done, way back then.

These are ore cars used in undergound gold mining.  Those were hard times, people!

We wound up in the small town of John Day, staying in a very nice city cg that had FHU (full hook up).  Of course we set up and then set OUT for a loop drive around the area.  You knew we would.  We saw a lone deer, then later on, 3 buffalo by a fence.  I wonder if they were gossiping?

This area is also experiencing the revenge of the pine beetle, with lots of dead pines in several places that we passed, but that is also the cycle of nature.

Brian, that  train photo was actually 3 photos ‘stitched’ together to make the wide-angle view.  This was done using Windows Live Photo Gallery, a free program that also stores our photos up there in that internet cloud in the sky.  Speaking of, I need to upload some more Oregon photos.

Go out and have some fun, y’all!