Cat Eyes---A Cat Woman's Photos: Strange Tuesday at Waldo--Massive Dust Devil and Weird Plane

Tuesday up at Waldo Lake dawned with clear blue skies! I was thrilled.

I began the day like every day there by firing up the propane single burner stove. It's just a single burner that screws into the top of a small propane cylinder and a bottom the cyclinder stands in. I had two near empty ones along. I only used one of those cylinders since I didn't cook much and just used the stove to heat water for morning coffee, outside of cooking dinner one night.

I sat in my car drinking the coffee to avoid mosquitos and tossed peanuts to the Stellars jays through my open window. They can be a little aggressive about what they want and boldly attack anything that looks like food left out.

I couldn't figure out that wing spread/fluttering behavior. Was there a female in heat? I read this morning that it is considered mildly aggressive behavior, to ward off other males. I had thought maybe it was mating behavior, but could not find anything similar in descriptions of mating. Generally the males may show off tail feather plumage, sidle (line up beside the female) and feed the female, in courtship. Generally a pair will continue mating and nesting for life. They will wing spread without the fluttering when "anting" or sunbathing.

I got an early start out for a very long paddle. I headed north. I've named some of the geographics by now. The point along which I keep my kayak, when in the site I'm in, is Shadow Point. The next point up, is First Point. The Point beyond that, east side, is Deception Point, because from there, when you look north, you really don't think its that far to the north end of the lake, but it is, with many points to go around.

Waldo Lake is in fact 5.75 miles long. If you traverse the shoreline, it is 22 miles around the lake.

Off I go, loaded up. I take my dry bag, which keeps things dry. I have the rope on the front with a float and my life jacket. Often I include my ancient boogie board with leash. I call it my ship to shore dingy. In fact it's an added floatation protection and to use when I stop and swim. It has a wrist tether. It's just a safety precaution because I go alone.

First Point and the far north end

I paddled up to First Point because if I'm lucky, I get one bar of cell service there. Otherwise, at the campground, there is no cell service. I wanted to text the petsitter to see if all was going well, although she never answers me. From there I looked north, using binoculars, and saw what looked like a smoke plume off the north end of the lake old burn scar.

I kept checking and rechecking and thought I should report it as a fire. That's all Waldo Lake needs is another fire. The north end burned long ago. The west side burned a few years ago along with part of the NE side.

I decided instead to cross the lake and head to Rhododendron Island.

Green Point is NW of First Point and on the west side of the lake. I named it Green Point because its green with still living trees where as most of the west side burned. There are two more points past Green Point before the island. The 2nd point has a gorgeous lagoon just after it.

Isn't this lagoon beautiful! I love it

Reflections

The Island. Miraculously it did not burn.

The shoreline behind it did burn

From behind the Island looking east

That's when I got a shock, as I came around the west side going north, and saw a huge dust devil, at the north end burn scar.

It finally broke up

I'd not seen anything like that before. I've seen some big ones in the fields this time of year and on the way home Thursday, driving up I5 from Eugene in gusting wind, I saw many small ones.

Excitement over. Time to get back to paddling.

The north end of the island. There's a picnic table at the top. You can walk up from the beach, have lunch there but you're not supposed to camp overnight.

Excitement wasn't over for the day. I began the paddle back to Green Point and heard something behind me. I thought it was a distant high altitude plane because it wasn't that loud. I turned around to look behind me. I didn't know what I was seeing.

Low and slow, it came directly towards me over the water. My mind scrambled to make sense of what I was seeing. It began to climb, so I could see its belly, whieh looked almost like the underbelly of a crab, with pointed cylinder protrusions either side.

I fumbled for my phone, to use the camera. It was back inside a dry bag. My mind had settled on believing this to be some sort of recreational small plane or ultra light. Meanwhile it had climbed by now overhead. I aimed my camera up but couldn't look because the sun was right overhead but I got a short video clip off it and a still of the underside.

By now I was thinking maybe it was a forest service water scooper plane. But that would mean a fire was nearby and I was sure there was no fire nearby.

You can see its not exactly normal. The body section ends in a point and seems seperate from the tail section and the props look a little off. Seems to have vertical risers end of wings.

I paddled on back to Green Point, then across the lake to First Point and then into First Point Lagoon. There's a terrific beach there, and a favorite beach of mine along First Point, where I swim, which i what I did then.

Once back at camp, when I saw the camp hosts headed by on their golf cart, I hailed them down, and showed them the video of the dust devil. They had no idea that was going on down at the burn. But then she said, "Did you see that plane?" I said "yes, it went right over me, low and way too slow I thought." In fact, I had wondered if there would be a mid lake plane crash scenario.

They thought maybe it was a retired guy who had camped there a couple years back and said he had an old military plane and liked it because he could fly it so low and slow over Waldo, Odell and Crater lakes, to see the bottom.

Well we all hoped that was the explanation.

Back home, I consulted chatgbt on what type of plane it is, from my photo. It came back with two types of old military transport planes. But neither had the uptilted wing tips. But I saw a reference to another type of transport plane, the C-17 Globemaster III and found an image from underneath! Bingo. And it has the expanded area under the wings that is what looked to me like a crab shell shape from underneath. Photo from a website.