~ By Vicky & Sumalee When I told a colleague about a contract job I was considering in Clear Lake, CA., she--like almost every Californian we spoke to--had a preternatural bias against Clear Lake. Upon hearing our plans, she paused and dropped her voice in concern: "have you  been there yet ?" That next weekend, S. and I reconnaissanced the lake and the RV parks nearby. I had also looked up a long-term stay RV park at Blue Lakes, so we also scouted it out. The Blue Lakes

~ By Vicky ~ 2024 was the kickstarter year of our truck camper adventures. We became the proud owners of a four-season, cozy, and highly capable truck camper that we aptly named The Roost, which perched atop our one-ton long bed truck we named Sanderling in honor of the hardy migratory shore bird whom we love to find dodging the swash and backwash along ocean shores. As campers who sought lesser-known forest roads on BLM land, we dreamed of a truck camper to expand our cam

~ by Sumalee ~ Last summer, V. and I hiked longer trails than typical for us. These were upward of eight miles, and we revisited these...

~ By Vicky ~ On our woodland birdwatching outings, we often spotted small nests woven into the branches of spindly trees, but the...

~ By Sumalee & Vicky ~ The Coast: La Playa Blanca and Chomes After getting our birding eyes primed for Costa Rica with the help of...

~ By Vicky ~ The Road to Monteverde For years we talked and dreamt of international travel. Our passports were renewed and hot off the...

~ By Sumalee ~ We have to start out with the pictures first, to get the heartbreak out of the way in order to write this story. Here are...

~ by Sumalee ~ About a year ago, V. and I were strolling the many straight lanes, once paved gravel roads, of a bygone U.S. Army training...

~ by Sumalee ~ Some time ago, V. and I made a discovery: the better birders we are, the fewer new birds we see. In our birding infancy,...

~ By Vicky ~ The wettest fall followed the driest summer yet experienced in all my years living in Oregon. And yet the lady and I were...

~ by Sumalee ~ You would think that neither of us would look forward to standing around in the rain peering through foggy, wet binocular,...

~ by Sumalee ~ “The early bird gets the worm” truly exemplifies an early birding foray we undertook recently to William L. Finley...

~ By Vicky ~ We went on a long weekend trip to Camano Island, WA to accomplish a few things. Firstly, to visit S.'s mom and see her new...

~ By Vicky ~ One of the many joys of home ownership is being able to do what one wants with one's own home and property. For instance,...

~ by Sumalee~ We do love birding for its own sake, but a wee part of both of us also wishes for that public affirmation, the imprimatur...

~ By Vicky ~ The lady and I had some difficult decisions to make: Go to Eastern Oregon for songbird migration, or to Klamath for more...

~ By Sumalee ~ We wanted to get out of town and see birds by the thousands: why not Sandhill Cranes? Although S. had seen Sandhill Cranes...

~ By Vicky ~ Prior to making our Birding Unfettered website about our birding adventures, S. and I had wanted to find a way to document...

~ By Vicky ~ We all know that the year 2020 was a wash. Covid was making its mark on the world. For a whole year and counting. Weird and...

~ By Sumalee ~ We embarked on a hike in Central Oregon that we had attempted before but abandoned due to weekend crowds. Today, a...