Today, Tuesday, we went up to Crater Lake, an old volcano lake with a cone shaped tree-covered island in the middle called "Wizard's Island."
Crater lake is amazing, the reflections of the sky make you dizzy, not knowing whether you are looking up or down.
Elva and I traded turns using her camera to take back-lit pics of each other with the sun behind us to capture our beautiful silver and gray hair.
Here she is, "the girl with the curl."
And a very nice pic of me I thought, looking as quietly happy as I felt to have discovered such wonderful new relatives. Interestingly they live about 100 miles from where my mother used to live, who was also a naturalist and bird fancier. They would have liked each other. I'm sure I've seen Elva's bookmarks and cards in my mother's desk. Now I have to check when I get back to see if they have "Elva Hamerstrom Paulson" on the front. My mom's birthname was Hamerstrom.
Elva's cards are carried in many U.S. National Parks. When she was in the thick of her business, she said she use to have 10,000 printed at a time. Ah, now, if I could get that going with my Chinese new years cards!
I thought I'd include a few more pics from the Wildlife Safari. Here's a very well hidden baby cheetah and a baby zebra arching its neck.
The next few days I spent processing pics and learning more about my camera and sharing stories about our mutual relatives. Two days were spent scanning some artifacts from my Aunt Ruby and reading some of the books written by Elva's mother, Frances Hamerstrom (for more information about her amazing life you can read this entry in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Hamerstrom, and by Elva's daughter, Lita Judge. Here's her web page if you'd like to view her wonderful paintings and find out about her books: http://www.litajudge.com/Ill_main.html.
Here's a good article and review about Elva's bird illustrations for a comprehensive book of Oregon's birds: http://www.newsreview.info/article/20030406/FEATURES/104060006.
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