I'm a great lover of the dry, piney forests of Eastern Oregon, so I nearly always have made my OSP camps as near to a ponderosa pine as I can safely get. But watch out, "widow makers" may lurk overhead-- those are dead branches that can fall down and cause serious injury. If there are any significant dead limbs overhead, I go find a better tree to camp under. Also, of course, as I learned in 1993 when "Lightning Tree" was created, camping near a tall tree can be very ill-advised if lightning kicks up! Finally, those ponderosas can be pretty "sappy," and drip gobs of hard-to-remove pitch onto your tent, so maybe you'd rather camp up on the open dust flats? Not me!

Picture credit goes to my youngest, 9 yr. old Davin, who snapped this picture of me with a disposable camera, which goes to show that you don't need a $700 digital camera for everything!

What is the "Big Picture" of the climate of Portland and Northwestern Oregon? Click here.