Day 4, which would be our final miles on the river, provided yet more surprises for the cast and crew of our little wilderness theatre.One of the guidebooks had described the Rogue River as "floating through a zoo" because of the plentiful eagles, osprey, deer, bear, chinook salmon, steelhead and wildflowers. But even that description falls short of what I witnessed right before we pulled over at our lunch spot (below) on this final day.
Beau and I took position as lead boat right before lunch since we were the first through the Clay Hill rapids. As we "eddied out" to wait for the inflatable kayaks to make it through, we witnessed the most unusual avian display.
Right next to our boat on shore was a vulture munching on a fish; however, his lunch was short lived because a young bald eagle drops by and chases the vulture away, claiming the lunch as its own.
That scene lasted less than a minute as a mature bald eagle swoops down from the trees, scoops up the fish and flies away. As the mature bald eagle is making a getaway, two osprey dive-bomb the bird like a couple of P-51 Mustang fighter planes attacking a B-29 in WWII.
It was a most amazing sight. "The fish was probably the property of the ospreys to begin with," mused Beau.
Since we had been "squinked" the night before and -- as a result -- come so far the previous day, we disembarked our respective craft at Foster Bar relatively early in the day, which worked out well because the long and winding road back to our starting point took awhile.Back at Galice, we bade a fond farewell to our newfound friends and, after a quick drink at the bar, Frank, Kelly and I headed toward Eugene, Corvallis and and points north.
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