2011 August 10, from near Portland, Oregon Hello, Everybody, I finally took the big plunge and switched from Windows to Mac OSX. I wanted a new laptop with higher performance anyway, and this provided a good time to switch. I was lucky enough to have a friend who is a super expert on computers and Macs, Joey Tuttle in Santa Cruz CA, and I spent a month there gradually getting the hang of things. And I had the perfect place for my camper truck, parked out of the way in our friend Laurie's driveway, where I even got some nice photographs to open the new slideshow with. After a week or so the new Mac was acting up, so Apple replaced it immediately at no cost, and the new one has been 100% fine so far. I was concerned that some of the Windows-only photographic programs I was used to would be a big problem on the Mac, and although it is possible to run Windows on the newer Macs I didn't want that complexity; but I ended up with an even better setup than before. Once I felt like I could get through at least most of a day without needing to phone Joey for help, I left Santa Cruz for Portland Oregon, mostly to visit and bird with my daughter EV. I headed inland and took the back roads, going over Tioga Pass in Yosemite N P, trying to remember it from my last crossing in 1964. Spent a few days near Mono Lake, which has interesting tufa carbonate pillars formed when the lake was higher (before LA grabbed the water) and mineral laden gas and water bubbled up in columns. From there I headed north through one of my favorite parts of the US, the Modoc Plateau of Northeast California, and into southern Oregon. It's a scenically varied country of few people and lots of lovely Ponderosa Pine forests with open glades below the high canopy. This is a land of quiescent volcanoes, and much of the ground underfoot is pumice; some of the rocks feel eerily light as you bounce them in your hand. I planned to enter Oregon by driving and camping along the N/S ridge of the Warner Mountains, but found that even in mid July the high passes were still snowed in. As I approached Portland from the southeast, I decided to dedicate some time to finding a bird which had eluded me before: the American Three-toes Woodpecker, which likes areas with lots of trees burned in wildfires. The guidebooks and internet recommended a burn area just northwest of the town of Sisters, and I found a nice place to camp there. Several days produced several Lewis's and Black-backed Woodpeckers, not as uncommon as the Three-toed but somewhat unusual - - but no Three-toed. In Portland EV and I spent two Sundays birding local areas, one with especially nice exotic plants which were good for photographs and attracting hummingbirds. Then we returned to camp for a weekend at the Sisters area to hunt for the woodpeckers (and other birds) again, and ended up doing very well: EV saw the Three-toed Woodpecker while I was cooking breakfast, and I never did see it, and she also saw the Lewis's and Black-backed, all new birds for her life-list. While I was cooking lunch she even saw another 'lifer', a Cassin's Vireo. A large raptor flew overhead with markings we didn't recognize until we looked in the field guides -- an immature Bald Eagle -- which was an unusual treat. The new slideshow is 11_08_Aug_CA_OR.exe The server address is: http://www.meetmarsha.com/~john (note the tilde ~ before the john part) Boilerplate follows: Each browser is a little different, but generally you can either choose OPEN to view the show once, or choose SAVE TO DISK and then OPEN if you want to have it your hard drive for future re-viewing. Right-Arrow or Right-Click or SpaceBar will advance to the next picture. Left-Arrow or Left-Click will return to the previous picture. Esc will end the show at any time; use Esc if the show ever seems stuck. If you don't have a high-speed Internet connection it's not realistic to download these large files on a phone line; please let me know, as it is very easy for me to send them to you on a CD. And if you would like any of the individual images, perhaps to print, just let me know. I periodically remove older slideshows to put up new ones; let me know if you want me to send you a CD of any of the 'back issues', or of all of them from 2004-2011 along with their accompanying emails, on CDs. And if you don't want to get any more emails like this one in the future, just let me know. If you have friends who might be interested, I'll be happy to add them to my email list and they can download the slideshows if they have a Windows computer and broadband internet connection. None of this is commercial or copyrighted, the more who enjoy the pictures, the better. Regards, John Armitage 1-970-250-6080 john@qued.com