U.S. 395 - Day Three

[Mark Walker]

Sorry, all, but West is Best.  When you head north from Burns, OR, you
essentially have the whole two-lane highway to yourself.  The highway and
the skyway.  And talk about country music!  Nashville's got nothing on this
place.  At least not when you consider it's essentially the ONLY thing you
can pick up on the radio.  And it's reeeeel good country music - spanning
the generations, and not yet available on CD.  In fact, not many 33 rpm
records, either.  Yassir, this is what's it all about.

Seriously - I didn't have a car or trailer to pass in over 200 miles.  Good
motorcycle riding country, too.  And that's pretty much what I have - a
Suzuki 1.0 cc with three semi-firing cylinders.

Strawberry Mountain Wilderness, Malheur National Forest, Grant County,
Oregon

North of Burns the road heads up into what is called Divine Canyon - and for
fairly good reason.  The terrain slowly transforms itself back into
evergreen country, and you pick up a few of the thousand feet that you lost
coming deeper into Oregon.  I was early on this day, and by 9:00 a.m. I was
in prime habitat.  I drove higher on Forest Service roads, and found a nice
spot with lots of rabbitbrush.  The Fritillaries and skippers were on the
wing early, and favored the yellow blooming bush throughout the day.  There
were even more species of Fritillary out today, and once again I was
perplexed as to what it was I was looking at.  I saw more Leto females, and
a very nice singleton of Speyeria mormonia.  Also common, but not as fresh,
were Speyeria hydaspe.  Along with the Frits and Skippers, there were a
number of other usual suspects - including a very large number of Nymphalis
californica (California Tortoiseshell).   Also, plenty of Cercyonis pegala -
these could be seen throughout the day flopping their way out of the bushes
and across oncoming traffic.  I was also pleased to see a number of Colias
alexandria (Queen Alexandria's Sulphur).  I continued to drive up this road
and checked similar patches of rabbitbrush, all very productive.