Southern Oregon Ramble - Fall 2003

-Idleyld Park and Steamboat Inn - Waterfalls! - Foreign Fauna - Driving for Vineyards - With Melpomene, Clio and Thalia - Historic Jacksonville - Up the Rogue - Crater Lake		Wildlife Safari - Land of Foreign Fauna As I said, Tuesday we had planned a trip around Crater Lake and a possible boat ride in the caldera lake, but when we woke up to rain and fog, we decided to do some checking before settling the plans for the day. So we drove the 3 miles into Glide, where we were hoping for better (any) cell phone reception. And it worked fine. When we connected with the Crater Lake ranger station, though, we learned that it had been 34 degrees that morning and it was raining and foggy there, too, and visibility was nil. So, we headed back into the valley, a great decision because it was cool in the valley, but sunny (well, a little rain), ideal conditions for viewing the various beasts at Wildlife Safari (http://www.wildlifesafari.org/). This is a 600 acre drive-through wildlife park with three major sections -- Africa, Asia and Americas. The European and Australian animals just have to get along as immigrants, I guess. This is a nice facility with roomy enclosures with ponds and woods and grasslands and an excellent reputation as a research and education center in addition to its tourist fame. The cool weather meant almost all of the animals were out roaming around and since they're used to the cars and the compounds are cleverly designed, you get great views of many of them. No pets are allowed on the drive through and you are warned to keep windows absolutely closed when in the compounds of the lions and cheetahs and bears (oh, my!). They do a good job of cleverly separating the hunters from the prey and it's apparently very effective because there are hundreds of deer and goats and water fowl of many kinds as well as lesser numbers of the more traditional exotics like giraffes, zebras, elephants, bison and ostriches. On this day, the ostriches were somewhat aloof, but our family remembers fondly a trip several years ago when an ostrich (some of them remember it as a giraffe or a llama) tried to eat the vinyl top of Aunt Margie's Datsun when we stopped to take some pictures. On our visit this year, our closest encounter was with a whole flock of exotic African ducks who decided to settle down in the middle of the road (in the nice dust) and have a mid-morning snooze. And there we were stuck until one of the park employees came along from the other direction and also had to stop for them. He waited about 5 minutes and then got out of the truck and shooed them to the side, or we might have been there for days. We saw almost all of the animals, some of them closer than others. The rhinos were pretty far away and the hippopotomi only snuffling noses above the surface of the pond and no cheetahs at all. Since cheetahs are what Wildlife Safari has made its research and breeding reputation on, we had expected to see quite a few. After driving through their compound, we asked the attendant where they were. Well, she said, one is hiding in the grass over there and I don't know where the rest of them are. Since this is a compound where you have to wait until the attendant comes to open the gate and close it behind you, we wondered about this a bit. Isn't she supposed to be keeping track of them or something? But we had plenty of great photo ops, there was an adorable young zebra and lots of other young animals. The lionesses put on a good show, pretending (maybe) they had found something to stalk and causing _their_ attendant to drive her jeep all around their compound just to keep them well in sight and, I suspect, in the sites of her tranquilizer gun should it become necessary. We had lunch and rode the little train (interrupting the engineer's chemistry homework it looked like) and poked about in the gift shop and then it was on to the valley wineries. Next