Today we met neighbours from Ballard who were staying at the same set of chalets as us, and after catching up for an hour, we headed over to the High Desert Museum. We’d planned to go there the last time we were in Bend, but the dirty air put us off. With snow covering the ground it was very pleasant.
Highlights were probably the river otters (two show off mammals who eat 11% of their body weight every day), the redtailed kite we were presented with early on, and the grey fox, a recovered animal with an injured hip that is now a permanent resident of the museum. There was a fun little exhibition on utopias and the cult up in Antelope, OR who tried infecting the electorate with salmonella to swing the result of the local elections in the 1970s, and quite a few lizards and snakes to look at. There was even an exhibition of x-ray photos of fish – so, quite the gamut of stuff, even if it didn’t seem totally coherent. Or maybe we were incoherent after yesterday.
After lunch, we trawled bookshops in Bend (superior to those in Astoria, I think, just in terms of size and range) and then came back to the chalet to find the disappointing news that the hot tub was out of order. Then dinner, reading, and to bed, planning for tomorrow’s exciting episode of this holiday.
2 responses to “High Desert Museum”
Glad you’ve arrived at your destination. Live animals in a museum ? Or are they stuffed ? Sounds as if the otters could be ?
There’s a few hides, but live birds, otters and a fox…