On a rather cool and intermittently overcast Sunday morning, we head out for a 2.5 hour (seemed like over 3 to me) foray up 12th Street, transitioning to Bushnell Road, then Bushnell Trail, then essentially cowpaths through heavy forest.
Astonishingly, as we followed a rough side trail, we came upon a friendly jogger. He crossed over a fence, which he said was the border of his own property and continued on his way up a sharp rise through thigh-high grass and brush. So we struck off in the opposite direction up a steep path to a ridge (after climbing a gate of ambiguous ownership), discovering at the top indications of both natural gas pipelines and fiber optic burial grounds. From there we had an overlook of the Grande Ronde Valley (and a mystery pond — still to be identified), and proceeded to follow a fence line in the direction of Mt. Emily.
When we saw that we appeared to be several hilltops (i.e., a couple of miles by my reckoning but probably not by Kim’s) behind the site of the communication tower above the Grandview Cemetery, we realized that continuing in that direction would leave us miles away from where the truck had been parked. So we turned left across a wide expanse of grass and rock to return to the treeline, hoping to stumble upon Bushnell Trail again. Which we eventually did. No wolf sightings today.
