Great Grey Owl @ Jacksonville Woodland Trails

Monday, May 11, 2020

Each year we hike at the Jacksonville Woodland Trails 20-30 times.  But over the past couple of weeks we have become owl whisperers.  In the last 3 hikes @ JWT, we have had 5 sightings of owls.  These sightings are along the White Oak trail for those of you who live in Southern Oregon and/or hike at the Jacksonville Woodland Trails.  One of the owls we saw in the past was about 20 or so feet from us, but we didn't have our camera and the our phone picture was mostly a dark silhouette.  When we did have our camera, the owls always were too far away and we had to settle for using our binoculars for a view.  But today, yes finally today, we saw not one, but two owls on our hike and we had our camera.  The first was not too far off the trail and was on a branch of a pine tree and is in the photos below.

First owl sighting which we think was a young owl

Same young owl just a slightly closer picture from a differnt angle on the trail.

We  are not sure what type of owl it was - let us know if you have any idea.  However, just a little further down the trail, Carol almost walked under a Great Grey owl that was literally 10 feet from us.  We spent 5-10 minutes just taking in the beauty of this creature and even got to point out the owl to two other people on the trail.  We even had Katie with us, yet the owl stayed right there on the branch for us. Incredible!

Our Great Grey friend @ JWT

Hope you enjoy the pictures and if you are in the Southern Oregon area, get out to those trails and find an owl if you can.  They are there, you just have to look real carefully.

Trekking Together
Glenn and Carol

Fish Lake Trail #1013

Saturday, May 8, 2020

We took Katie and drove to the Fish Lake boat ramp area and hiked the Fish Lake trail #1013 from Fish Lake to the North Fork Campground for a nice 6.9 mile trek through the forest. This hike also put us over the 200 mile mark for the year.

The trails starts by following the outline of the lake affording us some great views of a still full Fish Lake as well as a snow covered Brown Mt in the background.  Eventually the trail heads away from the lake as it skirts around some private cabin properties and then comes back toward the lake near the dam.  From here the trail follows the North Fork of the Little Butte river.  It has been a while since we last hiked here and since then they have put in logs across portions of the stream to create better wildlife habitat.  We only disturbed a couple of Canada Geese along the slow section of river, but the area looks like an ideal place for deer, elk and even beaver.  We took a break at a campsite in the closed North Fork campground befroe retracing our steps back to Fish Lake,   Lots of wildflowers, a few patches of snow, and the wonderful smell of the woods.  All in all a great hike on a very hot spring day.  Katie also enjoyed the "leash free" hike, eating and rolling in the snow, and of course, taking a few dips in the water.

Trekking Together
Glenn and Carol

View of Fish Lake with Brown Mt in background

Calypso Orchid

Yellow Violet

Oregon Anemone

North Fork of Little Butte along the trail.  Notice the "log jam" to far left of water

Some areas of water had lots of green algea

Still a few snow patches on the trail, much to Katie's delight

New boardwalk area over snow runoff water

One last look at Fish Lake and Brown Mt

Wonder Trail - Lower Section

April 11, 2020

With various trails closed due to coronavirus restrictions & those that are open way to narrow to hike with other people out, we headed to the Ashland Watershed area above Lithia Park to try a brand new trail that currently has been desingated as one-way for hiking/biking.

The temporary TH sign at the start of the Lower Wonder Trail

We parked at a pullout near the reservoir above Lithia Park and road walked a short distance to the new Lower Wonder Trail TH located to the right at the Fairy Pond parking area.  A notice is posted here asking all hikers/bikers to use this trail one-way only.

One of many great views of the surrounding area along the trail

A little art work 

Looking up at the trees

It didn't take the trail long to begin climbing as it took us up along a series of switchbacks.  The 2.9 length of this Lower section of the Wonder trail consisted of a nice mix of climbs and flat stretches.  The climbing switchbacks gave us opportunities at each turn to take in the beautiful views of the surrounding mountains and valleys.  The flat stretches gave us more time to look at the various wildflowers that escorted us along the trail.  There were plenty of Frittilaria's in bloom along with Hounds Tongue, Shooting Stars, Popcorn Flowers, Manzanita, Oregon Grape and more. We even saw Snow Queen and Indian Paintbrush in bloom at the same time on the same trail!

View of the Wonder Trail 

A group of Frittilaria's

A beautiful new trail!

The trail also had a varied mix of sections or landscapes.  The more open sections allowed us to enjoy the sunshine on a beautiful day while the forested sections allowed us to stop and listen to the wind blowing through the trees.  We also had shaded sections that navigated various ravines and allowed us to look up those ravines at the beautiful large trees and some very large boulders!

One large boulder with trail to the right

Another trail view

One of the boulder sections of the trail

We really enjoyed this brand new trail and want to say a special THANKS to the Ashland Woodlands & Trails Association for providing another wonderful trail to hike!  For today's hike, after we finished the Lower Wonder Trail, we hiked FR2060 back to our car for a nice 5.3 mile loop.  We hope though to come back soon and hike this trail again and then continue on the Upper Wonder Trail and Fell On My Knee trail while connecting with a few roads for a longer loop hike.

End of the Lower section - we went left to FR2060

Heading down the wide FR2060

Osprey we saw on way back to our car

In regards to people on the trail, we had one pair of joggers start just in front of us at the TH and one other couple that we saw behind us near the end of our hike.  We did have a pair of mountain bikers pass us --  we stepped off trail to allow them by.  Otherwise, no other people encounters.

Once again, thank you AWTA for this trail.  We had a Wonderful time on the Wonder Trail!

Trekking Together
Glenn and Carol