After looking at the pictures today I am kicking myself for not realizing sooner that my camera lens was dying. It has taken probably close to 200,000 shots so I guess it is not terrible that the focus motor is having trouble. I thought that I had a workaround but today, after switching to an older lens that I have, I see how out of focus the current lens was. The old lens has perfect focus every time. It doesn’t have near the zoom of the current one but I can just crop the images to get what I want.
Yesterday was our first sick day in a very long time while out in the RV. Jennie suddenly got a bad cold and was in no mood to do anything so we stayed home. She still felt pretty lousy today so I went out myself. Normally I would wait until she was better but we only have two more days here and unfortunately the CRV has developed a problem and I have to take it in to the Honda dealer tomorrow.
I really wanted to see this place so off I went, about an hour’s drive south.
Fort Rock is the remains of a volcanic crater out in the middle of a vast flat plain.
One end is open for easy access.
Here is the Google Earth view.
And here are the paths that I took.
I did a counter clockwise loop around the inside of the crater, with some side trips to some interesting spots. There is a trail that goes around the outside but I only did a small portion of it.
The trail first goes up to that small plateau at the very left of the picture above. Later in the day I got a shot of some people up there.
Looking out over the plain.
And back at the start of the crater wall.
The wide view
The photosphere.
Heading in along the wall, looking back.
I took a lot of photospheres today.
Since Jennie wasn’t with me, I tried to get other people in the picture to give a sense of scale but there were only about 10 others here today.
There were some interesting outcrops in the crater, at the end of the horseshoe.
Another photosphere.
I climbed up there as well, for a shot of this other one.
The photosphere.
The other side of it had much more character.
Looking back.
There is another small rocky ridge to climb.
It had a maze like surface.
At the end of the horseshoe the was a short easy side trail to climb up to the rim, that is lower here.
I had lunch where I took this photosphere. Another photosphere from a bit higher up.
One of the very circular farms that you always see from airplanes.
Heading back down to continue around the loop.
There are two more side trail to the rim but they were much steeper.
I think this was the path.
Another group was heading up.
Up I go.
There is so much more detail in the flowers when the lens actually focuses properly.
I took the one on the right first. It led to this small notch.
A photosphere.
Then across a traverse and up to the left much larger viewpoint.
The photosphere.
I walked over to this outcrop, on the right below, that gave a nice high overview of the crater.
And the photosphere.
Heading back down to continue around to the other end of the horseshoe.
Apparently that group that was ahead of me was not content to just go to the viewpoint but went all the way to the end along the top.
If you match the picture below you can find him in the one above.
Going around the end.
The other side was really carved out, I guess by the wind? The birds just loved all the little hidey holes.
I briefly thought about continuing around the outside trail but decided that I had had enough.
Heading back along the opening towards the car.
Driving home I took the dirt road that took me passed the far side that I had started to walk around.
A very cool place and I am sorry that Jennie missed it. She would have really enjoyed all the rocky features.
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