houndstooth & lucite

This is, um, the lid to the ice bucket at our swanky Vegas hotel.

It would be fun to say these were taken during a wild alcohol-fueled photo binge, but that wouldn't be true. At least not strictly true. Not that I recall, I mean.

shelter, 5th avenue

Rain pooling up on top of Portland's fancy new bus shelters. This is what we encountered upon returning from sunny Las Vegas. It was not a "Yay, Portland" moment.

Neon: Paris Las Vegas

More Vegas photos, this time some night pics of Paris Las Vegas. The Eiffel Tower shown here is not quite as tall as the original, but is still just short of the tallest building in Portland, despite serving no strictly practical purpose.

I'm aware these photos are exactly identical to everyone else's night photos of the place, other than the fact that that they're mine, but hey. FWIW, these were taken from the Deuce bus, as we sat there stuck in traffic for an extended chunk of time.

During our first Vegas trip, wayyyyy back in February, I discovered that Paris Las Vegas is a great (and probably the only) place to obtain a clear plastic Eiffel Tower full of strawberry daiquiri, which you can then walk down the street with, perfectly legally. I didn't get one of those this time around; if you have plans for the day beyond consuming a ginormous daiquiri, the ginormous daiquiri is not an asset, as it turns out.

flamingoes @ the flamingo

A few tourist photos of the flamingoes at the Flamingo Las Vegas. We were actually there mostly in search of parrots, but no such luck, possibly due to the extreme heat that day. The signs asserted that the parrots were away while their cages were being polished, but I didn't see anyone actually polishing any cages. So I'm going to chalk that up as silly PR -- unless the cage polishing team was on break when we were there -- union rules, and all that.

Flamingoes aren't really the most fascinating of birds unless you're an avian taxonomist, and they seem to spend much of the day sleeping, and they don't do much in the way of mugging for the camera. But they do have a certain visual appeal. And since I've been semi-typecast as just a photoblog, a mere source of transient visual stimuli, I think I'll just step aside and let you enjoy the photos, or not, or whatever.

cascade haze

vegas (last time around)

At this moment, I'm in the airport waiting for the next plane to Vegas. Here are a few photos from the last visit.

Apropos of nothing, look at the list of tallest buildings in Las Vegas, and compare it to the tallest buildings in Portland. Our tallest would be #12 on the list in Vegas, just ahead of the Eiffel Tower at Paris Las Vegas. No, seriously, I mean it. And just 3 of ours would make the top 35 in Vegas.

On top of that, the buildings we do have tend to be boring and beige and almost entirely lacking in neon or glitz of any kind. In Vegas they would've all been imploded years ago. Just sayin'.

Colliding Rivers

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Today's expedition through the mini-roadtrip archives takes us south again. This time we're near the small town of Glide, Oregon, visiting the (somewhat) famous Colliding Rivers -- where the North Umpqua and Little River meet head on. Wikipedia and various other sources claim this is the only place in the world where this happens. That's quite an expansive claim, and I'm not sure I buy it, but at the very least it's an unusual situation.



I didn't post the photos earlier because I thought I hadn't captured the place very well. A name like "Colliding Rivers" suggests a violent clash, whitewater spraying everywhere, bewildered salmon leaping in all directions trying to figure out which way is upstream, etc. Instead, I had photos of two rivers gently flowing together at a somewhat unusual angle.

After consulting the interwebs and realizing that everyone else's photos of the place looked just like mine, I figured mine were postable after all. I'm told the collision gets more rambunctious in the winter and spring when there's more water, but people mostly visit in the summer, and I haven't yet run across a photo of what it looks like at other times of the year.



The best photo I've found of the place, actually, comes from the website for the Umpqua National Forest. Their photo gallery page links to a great (but huge) panoramic photo of the area. It does kind of make sense that if two rivers meet head on, you'll want either a lens that captures close to a 180 degree angle, or you'll want to take multiple photos and stitch them together. My little digicam at the time I took these did have a photostitch mode, but using it didn't occur to me at the time. So consider this a note for future reference.

For another angle on the place, here's someone's aerial photo, which makes it a bit more clear what's going on here.

If you want an even closer view, Douglas County has a public boat ramp just downstream.

Also, here's a nice Medford Mail-Tribune article about the place.

One thing I don't have a photo of is the visitors information center. I was unaware of this, but apparently it's a historic building constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps back during the depression.

Believe it or not, the Colliding Rivers play a supporting role in an idiotic New Age belief. As the, ah, hypothesis goes, the earth is going to bump into something called a "photon belt" in 2011 or so, and a variety of uncanny events, both apocalyptic and wonderful, will occur. This is described in a book titled Touched by the Dragon's Breath: Conversations at Colliding Rivers. Amazon's blurb for the book is an impressive piece of brain-melting word salad:

Touched by the Dragon's Breath is based on actual conversations that took place between the author and his mentor, John Redstone, splashed against the backdrop of Colliding Rivers in Southern Oregon. These weekly discussions, spanning more than three years, explain in detail the significance of 2012, the Photon Belt, Zero Point, the light wave of creation, and the 50-year Time/Space Overlap Zone between the Piscean Age and the Age of Aquarius. In two related conversations about the Seedbed and the Mirror of Life, John Redstone reveals his step by step approach to cleaning up the Belief System, a key element in preparing for the global frequency shift commonly called the Shift of the Ages that will usher in a new Golden Age.

In a separate chapter highlighting prophecies from the Hopi, Maya, Aztec, and Tibetan cultures, the author substantiates many of Mr. Redstone s views on 2012 and the Photon Belt, a spectacular band of multi-dimensional light, secretly known to some as the Dragon's Breath. The author also provides valuable, little-known information about water, as well as personal glimpses into his own spiritual journey; most notably, a quest that began over 70,000 years ago in the ancient land of Lemuria.

Uhh... alrighty then. I mean, I'm not arguing this is more idiotic than some of the notions Christian fundies come up with, and at least New Agers tend to be nonviolent when they get wacky about stuff. And at least it tends to be affluent and (supposedly) educated gullible people getting ripped off this way, plus I'm not aware of them wanting the government to impose their ideas on anybody -- no mandatory crystal-gazing in the schools or anything like that. But still, the human capacity to believe complete barking-at-the-moon gibberish never ceases to amaze me, and not in a good way. If the blurb's any indication, the stuff's not even written very well. If I put my mind to it, I'm sure I could churn out New Age crap of vastly higher quality than what's out there at present.

I think I've said this before, but every now and then I'm tempted to chuck it all and run off and start a New Age cult. If only there was a way to make these people give me all their money without having to actually meet or interact with them. I'd still probably feel guilty about the whole thing, and I wouldn't enjoy being mocked by skeptics (and I'd agree with them, secretly, and I'd soon come to loathe my followers). But still, it's basically free money without having to produce anything of value. As I said, it's a tempting idea now and then.

Loll Wildwood expedition

Today's fabulous expedition takes to the rolling hills of outer SW Portland, to a spot the city calls West Portland Park Natural Area, and Metro (and the local neighborhood association) calls "Loll Wildwood". Seems that Metro owns the land as part of its Greenspace program, but the city of Portland operates the park (to the degree that any "operating" occurs here), and both agencies have their own ideas on what to call the place. You'd think that this would be easy -- the surrounding neighborhood has long been known as "West Portland Park", and you'd think the park would've taken its name from that, or vice versa.  But when local agencies have turf battles -- or even worse, try to share nicely -- even the simplest decision becomes 12-dimensional chess, apparently.

If you look closely at the map, you'll note a city water tank on the upper left side of the park. This no doubt belongs to the city water bureau, which has its own system of what it calls "HydroParks", thus horning in on the parks bureau's turf a little. Whenever they get around to doing the HydroPark thing here, I fully expect the area to acquire a third unrelated name, and we'll be playing 12^3 dimensional chess instead.

My main interest was in a historical marker next to the park, which gives rise to the "Loll Wildwood" name. I assumed the park itself would be yet another chunk of generic forest, and I've covered a few of those already, plus I was unable to find a way into the place to see for myself. The idea behind Metro Greenspaces is to just buy land and sit on it for the long term, until funds to develop & maintain the place become available. They haven't gotten to this spot yet. I did peek at a few spots around the perimeter of the park, er, wildwood, looking for anything vaguely trailhead-like, but I didn't see anything that looked promising. Like I said, I had the place figured as generic forest, and all photos inside generic Northwestern forests look alike, so why take more? I mean, I'd be delighted if I'm wrong and there's something unique I need to go back and check out, and if there is please let me know. As it is, I took a few photos of the, uh, wildwood, from outside looking in, but strictly for the sake of completeness. Don't bother complaining to me that they aren't Fine Art, or that they aren't especially good photos. I'm well aware of that already, thanks.

FWIW, the city's vegetation summary page for the park is here. I tend to cover vegetation unit surveys because often they're the only detailed info the city provides about a given place, and they give a very broad idea of what to expect if you manage to find a way to wander in, which I didn't.

But I digress, and I'd just started on about the historical marker. On the shoulder of SW 35th Avenue, near Arnold St., is this memorial to Ernest C. Loll, a Multnomah County Sheriff's Deputy who was killed in the line of duty at this very spot, back in 1935. The unusual detail is that he was on fish and wildlife duty, and was apparently murdered by bird poachers. The account doesn't explain what sort of birds the poachers were after; I'm not an avid birdwatcher, by any means, and possibly it's just my ignorance showing, but I'm unaware of any local birds worth killing someone over. But then, the market for ornamental feathers is not what it once was.

Every year on Peace Officers Memorial Day (on or around May 15th), the county sheriff's department holds a memorial ceremony here.  I ran across a small gallery of photos of last year's event. There's more history about the marker & the name of the park at (recently elected city commissioner) Amanda Fritz's blog. And there's a mention of Deputy Loll on this page at Ancestry.com.

Pics: Lakeview, Oregon

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Some old mini-roadtrip photos from around Lakeview, a small town out in far SE Oregon. I don't really have much to say about the place, other than that the town's kind of cute in a small-town, Old West sort of way. More info at the city's website, the local newspaper, and/or someone's unofficial home page for the town.



Lakeview's the county seat of Lake County, population 7,422 (and falling), size 8,358 square miles. In terms of size, that's just a tad smaller than the state of New Jersey, which has 8,729 square miles and an estimated 8,682,661 people, or so sayeth Wikipedia. Or for this humble blog's surprisingly nonzero UK readership, Lake County is slightly larger than Wales (8,022 sq. mi., ~3,004,600 people).



One more fun tidbit: The population density here is less than one person per square mile, so the county isn't even dense enough to count as "rural" under the long-used definition of 6 per square mile. Instead, Lake County is still considered frontier. Seriously. Frontier. And even that's kind of a fudge -- during the 19th century, uh, frontier era (when these definitions were dreamed up), you had to have at least two people per square mile to even count as frontier, otherwise you fell under "vacant land", untamed and (supposedly) unsettled land way out beyond the frontier.



As you're probably aware, back then "unsettled" generally meant "land we haven't wrestled or swindled away from the Indians just yet". Once that happened, generally a few pioneers showed up and tried to homestead for a few short years. They soon discovered it was a really poor spot for a wheat field or an apple orchard, and they moved on. Then the land reverted to the feds, primarily the BLM, and they've owned it to this day. I haven't found a figure on just how much of the county is federally owned, but if you're curious you could probably go to Lakeview, walk into any bar in town and ask the oldtimers, and they'd be glad to rant on and on about the topic at great length, black helicopters optional.

Updated: We now have linkage from here, part of a series about an extended roadtrip through Eastern Oregon and Northern Nevada. Definitely worth checking out.