Lake County, Oregon, Day 2: Summer Lake

I woke up early on Green Mountain and headed out.

I left the juniper woods of the Christmas Valley area and drove south to the Basin and Range Country of south central Oregon.  This area holds the lakes for which Lake County is named.  I visited a state Wildlife Refuge, and hiked a route that's in one of my guidebooks.  I guess if one is an avid birdwatcher, this would be a nice route to walk.  But I don't have much patience for slowly stalking birds, and no expertise for identification, so this route ended up being pretty monotonous for me.

Summer Lake is so named because John C. Fremont, a locally well known US government explorer who surveyed the area during the 1840's, was stuck up on a large ridge above the lake, during cold weather.  Looking down on the lake, he thought it looked like summer on the lake (Summer Lake) and felt like winter on the ridge (it's now called Winter Rim).  Fremont later became a Union general during the Civil War, and was known as an abolitionist.  He was the first presidential nominee of the Republican Party.

It was a moody and dark morning.

This region (spreading south to Las Vegas and southast to the Utah Border) is notable for a strict regularity of geographical features: large, north-south oriented  mountain ranges separated by dry or shallow lake bed basins.  Many of the lakes only fill up on wet years.  Several of the largest of these lakes in Oregon include Abert Lake, Summer Lake, Alvord Lake, and Hart Lake.  Abert Lake is saltier than the Pacific Ocean.  So, don't drink the water.  Actually, don't even let it touch your skin- it will slowly burn your skin off, it's so alkaline.  

Most of the parts of the Lake that I visited this morning were dry.  In this form, it's called an alkali flat.  

Birds love these lakes, though, because they find lots of morsels of foods like brine shrimp and bugs.  Yummy.  There were lots of birds there when I arrived in the morning.

I tried to get good pictures of the birds, but most of them flew away before I got into range of my lens.  So I got lots of picture of little lakelets that had birds in them minutes ago!

By the time I got to the end of the out and back route (it just follows a dike), I'd walked a straight line out about 2 miles.  I'd scared all the birds off, so I walked a straight line right back to my car, without the entertainment of scared-off-birds.  I got bored.  At least it wasn't raining, eh?  The weather's been so bad in the Willamette Valley people are going nuts, just waiting for seasonal weather to arrive.  It was nice to be in the sun.  

The landscape did have its attractions.  It's hard to take a photo of this lake without Ansel Adams' images of Mono Lake popping into my head.  Mono Lake is a similar lake, in the Great Basin, and with an important bird population.

Across the basin, dust devils lifted the dry soils into the air.  Here are three, right in a row!  (You might need to click on this one and enlarge, since they're pretty distant).

There was a final surprise for me.  When I neared my car, I saw a nice pair of small birds sitting on a parking sign:

I have no clue what they are.  Here's an enlargement:

Hope you enjoyed!