Welcome to John Carr Outdoors! 

Please visit the blog and follow. The follow button can be found at the bottom of the page. 

If you are seeing this on Facebook, click the link to visit the blog to see all of the photos.

Catherine Creek

First weekend of spring and what a day it was.

Sunshine and blue skies with a little snow on the ground above 2,000 feet. Too many colorful wild flowers to count in the lower elevations and a few butterflies to keep me company.

I truly enjoyed a nine-mile, 2,000-foot elevation gain hike on the east side of Catherine Creek Canyon, mainly in open Oak Savannah.

Besides multitudes of purple grass widows, there were gold stars, buttercups, yellow and Columbia desert parsley, great hound’s tongue, larkspur and western saxifrage in bloom.

As I moved into the timber on the upper ridge, I spotted numerous deer tracks where I occasionally spot blacktail deer and wild turkeys. There were none to be seen on this day.

Several years ago I met a man a few years younger than me in that same spot. He was dressed in camouflage and carrying a shotgun. After greeting him he showed me a large wild turkey tom he had got that morning.

He explained he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Turkey hunting in the Catherine Creek area was a key item on his six-month bucket list.

As a child, his family would come to visit his grandparents nearby. In the springtime, he, his dad and grandfather would hunt turkeys in the canyons near Catherine Creek. The memories were very special to him.

After saying goodbye I thought about how much I admired his courage and drive. Would I be as brave, or would I fall into the pit of depression?

Larkspur

Columbia Desert Parsley, Great Houd’s Tongue, Rusty Popcorn Flower, Western Saxifrage, False Agoseris and Biscuit Root

Wild Lilies: Yellow Bell and Common Camas