I have reasonably dark skies here on the Oregon Coast, but between my tall trees and ocean weather I'm always complaining about, I decided to take a drive into the nearby mountains to look for an occasional getaway where I can do some great nightime sky viewing and photography. I grabbed a topomap and headed out to a small campground at about 3,500' in elevation that looked interesting, at least on the map. When I arrived at Wildhorse Campground about an hour later, I was surprised to find this campground was on the edge of one of the largest forest fires in Oregon history that occurred about 7 years ago, just before we move up here. Named the Biscuit Fire Complex, it burned just over 500,000 acres(780 square miles), was started by lightning about 25 miles southeast of here, and burned for nearly 4 months until the winter rains put it out. It is truely a devestated area but is beginning to recover nicely, slowly but surely. It will be a very nice place to observe the skys as with a short walk from the campground, there is nothing for miles to the south and east. Anyway, I thought I would post a few photos of my days walk and exploration.
The western edge of the fire complexarea
Wildhorse Campground is just to the right behind that tree line
The old and the new, the Douglas Fir seedlings are coming back nicely, though I'll never see a forest here again
What it used to look like and will someday again!
