Western Scenes

I drove Trail Ridge Road enroute Denver a few days ago. Here's a pic looking toward the Gorge Lakes, accessible only by a rigorous cross country trip. I've always been intrigued by this spot, visible from the road to throngs of people but the lakes reachable only by a few hardy mountaineers. Blow the pic up and you can see two lakes in the lower left center...the higher one is Inkwell Lake, the lower is Arrowhead.

The Lizards make an appearance above timberline, almost 12 thousand feet above sea level.

This is the aptly named Flaming Gorge reservoir in northeastern Utah. The gorge was named by John Wesley Powell, who led the first expedition that rafted through the Grand Canyon.

The Morrow county courthouse in Heppner, Oregon, a classic stone structure built in 1902. A year later Heppner was hit by a massive, catastrophic flash flood that killed over 200 people...almost a quarter of the town's population. Due to its sturdy construction and elevated location, the courthouse survived.

An old, abandoned grain elevator in Ione, near Heppner. These desolate elevators have become a symbol of the vanishing farm towns across America. However, in Ione this picture is a little deceptive...there are two defunct elevators in the vicinity, and two functioning ones that have simply replaced the old structures. Amazingly, despite having grown up in Portland and visited many times since, I had never been to Heppner and Ione, though they are only about two hundred miles away. With all the traveling I do, I still find many roads in the west that I've never driven, and others that I haven't traversed in a quarter century or more.