The large fruit covered bush/tree outside our window has offered us lots of views of hungry birds of several colorful kinds. Some we are pretty sure are House Finches (very similar to Purple Finches), with reddish heads and chests. These little critters hang on the branches and reach to tug at the fruit; sometimes they are nearly upside down. We've seen two different kinds of yellow birds, one much larger than the other, but we can't identify them for sure. The bush is thick enough and the birds flighty enough that we haven't been able to get any photos. It's quite a show.
After breakfast we walked around the campground. One of our neighbors is currently living in Sand Point, ID, but trying to sell his house there to move to a town in Montana north of Missoula. He used to live in Yakima, but says it was overrun by Mexican drug gangs. Yikes!
After lunch we tackled the hike up the canyon side again. This time we took our hiking sticks. We were on the lookout for snakes because one of our fellow campers mentioned that there are lots of rattlesnakes in this area.
The first part of the trail is easy to find and follow. This photo shows the trail looking down across the road to the campground. We could see flotillas of rafts floating down the river, filled with noisy folks celebrating the holiday.
As we got higher up, the trail nearly disappeared and became very steep. We were very glad to have our hiking sticks. At some points we were carefully planting our feet sideways and leaning on the sticks to avoid slipping back down the hillside. Were we still hiking? Or were we verging on mountain climbing? Our route was following a natural drainage line between two slopes. The rock here is volcanic with plenty of black basalt.
We were glad to have the rocks to use for stepping stones, but when we came to tumbled piles of rock, I was pretty leery of the possibility that snakes were likely to be resting under them. We saw a number of holes in the earth and some round pellet scat, but no wildlife except for the desert plants and a few bees.
Our reward for reaching a peak of sorts was being able to see the river snaking southwards, flanked by the road and railroad. We could see evidence of settlement or agriculture in the distance to both the north and the south. Trucks were visible following a distant ribbon of Hwy 82.
We stood for a while at the top, surveying the landscape in all directions, before starting back down. Almost immediately I heard Ken yell and saw him jump. He and a snake had had a close encounter. He didn't see it well enough to tell what kind it was, but he certainly didn't want any closer acquaintance.
We were tired, and it was time to fix dinner when we reached the bottom of the slope. Fortunately I had an enchilada casserole ready to put in the oven. We had planned to drive into Yakima this evening and maybe go to the fireworks display, but we decided to stay home and rest. I took a nap and could easily have slept through the night.
We are still feeling media deprived. Although we've run the generator briefly a couple of times today, we still don't really have enough power to run the TV and sound system. We did play a couple of CD's, but no Newshour and no mindless reruns. We have been able to get on the Internet today, although it's very slow. We did some research on what to pack for an Alaska cruise. We know that we'll be off the net most of the time on the cruise. We saw one good suggestion to take along walkie-talkies to stay in touch with family members on board ship. We're so used to just being able to call each other anytime.
We had some excitement during the night last night. About 4:00 a.m. the fire alarm went off. We sprang out of bed to find smoke filling the living area. I pulled on my sweats and prepared to run out the door, but Ken insisted that we turn something off. I saw a pan on the stove with a very low flame underneath. I had put a quart of water and two family sized tea bags in our Corning Ware pot to make iced tea. We usually use the microwave for this operation, but we're conserving electricity since we're off the grid.
The tea had all boiled away, and the tea bags had become charcoaled. The pot looked ruined, and the whole place smelled awful. We opened the windows and turned on all the exhaust fans. After the pot had cooled a bit, I poured some water in to douse the sparks still alive in the erswhile tea bags. In the morning, I scraped out the pan and put some baking soda and water in to boil. After a couple of rounds of this treatment, the pan was as good as new. Our nerves may never be quite the same, but we definitely dodged another bullet. Now I'm thinking about how we would manage if we had a real fire.
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