White-faced Ibis

Bear Lake National Wildlife Refuge in southeast Idaho is home to about 5000 white-faced ibis in the spring.  The birds breed in colonies in the bulrushes, and the refuge has one of the largest nesting colonies.

Just outside the refuge I came across lots of birds flying in and landing in the deep grass of a hay field.  They eat aquatic insects, earthworms, larvae, and so on, and often find food in damp soil.  I’m not sure why they were gathering in this field.

It was fun watching them glide in and disappear after they landed.  They just kept coming, and every once in awhile a few would poke their heads up to see what I was doing.

I have no idea how many were hiding there, but they tend to congregate in huge colonies.  I was lucky to be able to watch these interesting birds.

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Minidoka Pilgrimage

I’m on my 45^th camping trip, in our 35^th year with Bruce Gregory and Stephen Johnson, and we traveled to the Minidoka Japanese internment camp in Idaho, also called Camp Hunt.  We are all interested in western history, and since I had been there a few years ago I knew they would enjoy it.  It turned out to be an amazing experience.

When we arrived we found out that there were two special events in progress.  Former internees and their descendants were there by the busloads for an annual pilgrimage, and a new baseball field was being dedicated.  There were about 250 people present to remember the past, discuss the possibilities of this injustice happening again to other ethnic groups, and to look to the future of the camp.  Many came from the Seattle area, where a large number of internees originated in World War II.

Baseball was important to many of the 9000 people who were forced to live there, and the restoration of one of the fourteen ball fields was completed as a field-in-a-day project on May 28^th and dedicated during our visit on June 26^th.

 Several people there wore Camp Hunt baseball shirts.

Minidoka is run by the National Park Service, and at one time there was very little left of the site, but now parts of it are being restored.  There are still a few concrete slabs from original structures, and now buildings that were removed from the camp when it was closed are being located and moved back.  A guard tower replica has been constructed and interpretive signs have been put in place.  So, the National Park Service and Friends of Minidoka are working together to build a site that will help people understand the injustice that occurred here.

For now, artifacts from Minidoka are on display at Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument visitor’s center, which is 38 miles away.  I hope that someday soon an on-site visitor’s center will be completed.

A highlight of the visit for me was the placing of origami peace cranes on a barbed wire rack.  People wrote their thoughts and dedications on the cranes before tying them to the rack.

The day was a moving experience for everyone there, and I feel that we stumbled on an important piece of Idaho history.

See my blog post about Topaz for a brief explanation of internment camps.

http://rosswalkerphotos.blogspot.com/2015/11/topaz-japanese-internment-center-utah.html

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Palouse Barns, Washington

Linda and I got away for a week in the beautiful Palouse region of Washington.  I plan to publish at least three posts from this trip, and possibly more.  One of the sights we enjoyed was the abundance of barns.

This was one of my favorites.  It was in a quiet location near Manning.  The grounds are beautiful, with a manicured lawn and wild roses in the foreground. 

When photographing barns, it helps to include the setting instead of taking an ordinary close-up of the building.  Each barn has a photographic story.  This one somewhere on a back road near Colton is isolated in a field.  Notice that there are no roads or paths leading to the barn, so perhaps it is unused and abandoned.

The Dahmen barn in Uniontown is special.  It is surrounded by a fence made of over 1000 wheels and gears.  The restored 1935 barn houses the work of many first rate artists, including photographers.  We could have spent hours photographing this barn and fence.

One of the things I really enjoyed about these barns was how neat everything is.  The grounds of active farms were almost always immaculately kept, with no junk around.  This was true nearly everywhere we went in the Palouse.  Often, older equipment was restored and displayed on the property, like this color coordinated truck in Uniontown.

We spent a lot of time on back roads, and discovered a few abandoned farms.  This property included a house, outhouse, two combines, and other abandoned machinery.  The surrounding fields were still being cultivated even though these buildings were abandoned.   It was much easier to stop on the back roads and take pictures when we weren’t fighting busy traffic and looking for a place to pull over.

Clouds and shadows made a big difference.  This old barn near Colton wasn’t too exciting since the surrounding fields were bare dirt, but when clouds moved in, the shadows transformed the scene.

The back roads around Colton were just loaded with beautiful barns.  We were delighted to see two together here, and a low viewpoint added the cattle guard for extra interest.

The toughest part of this post was selecting some favorites out of the dozens we stopped to photograph.  The Palouse may not be a big tourist destination, but it sure is a great place for photography.

Please be aware that all my photos are copyrighted, and cannot be used without my permission.