Otak Blog

The Yakima office staff tested out their culinary skills this year for what will hopefully become an annual Halloween tradition. Delicious treats were brought in by all to make gluttons out of even the smallest appetites. This could have easily turned out to be an Iron Chef competition with dishes such as: roasted pumpkin spinach salad; chicken and corn chowder; three-bean turkey sausage chili; and the big hit, Ghosts in the Graveyard (think baking pan filled with chocolate mousse covered with Oreo cookie crumbs, then insert cookies to look like tombstones and add dollops of whipped cream to look like ghosts). With Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” providing the ambiance, the Yakima office achieved a new level of “fullness” that will be used as training ground for the upcoming holiday season. Yum, yum!

This past spring, Carbondale’s Gary Long spent five days on a solo journey along the Oregon-California Trail, starting at South Pass, Wyoming. A Recreation and Visual Resource Specialist based in Cheyenne, Gary wanted to hike the trail before winter snowmelt opened the back-country roads to motorized travel. The trail runs through open country with unobstructed views for almost 100 miles in every direction, at an elevation of about 7,500 feet. The vegetation is mostly sagebrush and grasslands—to some, bleak country with little scenic value. To Gary, it is a vast landscape, teeming with wildlife. In addition to bands of wild horses, he found antelope, sandhill cranes, sage grouse, and no trace of other human beings. Although he was hiking the trail in reverse, from west to east, Gary says it was easy to imagine himself an immigrant or gold-seeker heading west in the mid-19th century. A severe case of blisters on the balls of both feet shortened Gary’s trip from a planned 100 miles to 50 (still about 8 miles a day), and he rejoined civilization at Sixth Crossing, where the Oregon Trail crossed the Sweetwater River for the sixth time.