On the Road: (Pacific Northwest, 2011) Home Again

I'm home again today, having stayed last night in Reno--at the same hotel I used on the way out, again for $27 a night. I stayed the previous night in Eugene, Oregon. Most of the past two days was spent driving through pretty countryside--lush in southern Oregon, gradually drier and more rocky as I moved into California and Nevada. Along the way I stopped at the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge, where I took the driving tour of the wetlands there. I got a new life bird, the Redhead, a duck that's not that uncommon, but one I'd never managed to see before. There were hundreds of Eared Grebes (photo), in the breeding plumage we rarely see at home in Sonoma County. Otherwise, it was mostly Coots, Scaup, and White Pelicans--and blue dragonflies, whole clouds of them clinging to the vegetation by the water. Along the way, stopped at a stoplight, I found myself behind a pair of bikers. Check out their license plates (hers says BW8N4ME, his says IBW8N4U).