Tucannon River Campsites

Lightning sparks 180 fires across Oregon, with more expected this weekend

LA GRANDE – Crews are battling a 10,000-acre range fire in Wheeler County and a 1,000-acre blaze in timberland on the Warm Springs   reservation Thursday after a lighting "bust" peppered Oregon with more than 9,400 strikes in 24 hours.

With 90-plus-degree temperatures forecast over much of the region and more lightning expected, firefighters could be in for a busy weekend, said Mark Morrow, spokesman for the Northwest Interagency Fire Coordination Center in Portland.

"The Umpqua National Forest could get pretty active because of the number of strikes there," he said.

Lightning strikes ignited more than 17 fires on the Warm Springs reservation, the biggest being the 1,000-plus acre Webster Fire. The Warm Springs fires together are being called the High Cascades Complex. They're not threatening any structures so far.

The Hancock Fire near the unincorporated settlement of Clarno in Wheeler County is burning across empty rangeland. About 55 children and a dozen staff members had to leave the Hancock Field Station outside Fossil on Wednesday night. Oregon Museum of Science and Industry spokeswoman Andrea Middleton said the camp staff is ready for this sort of thing, and took the kids to a campground outside Fossil, where they spent the night in tents.  

In all, lightning triggered about 180 fires across the state, Morrow said. They included several small blazes in northeastern Oregon's rugged Wenaha-Tucannon Wilderness that U.S. Forest Service smoke jumpers from McCall, Idaho, were fighting, said Rene Crippen, manager of the Blue Mountain Interagency Fire Dispatch Center near La Grande.

Firefighters also rappelled from helicopters onto fires near McGraw Lookout at 5,920 feet elevation overlooking Hells Canyon of the Snake River and into the Sled Springs area on the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest, she said.

My Life as an Airstream

  My life as an Airstream trailer began in the Airstream, Inc.’s California assembly plant in the late spring of 1962.

Wally Byam, the man who founded Airstream, always said: “Let’s not make any changes – let’s make only improvements.” Consequently, it’s easy to get into a debate with someone as to why I’m a 1962 versus a 1963 or later, and why I’m from California and not at Airstream’s Ohio plant.

Not that it’s important to anyone but me. Still, I could not have been built in the company’s Ohio plant because my combination tub-and-shower is tucked into my rear curbside corner, not my rear streetside corner, as was common in Ohio-built models. That, and the fact my model designation is crafted in a laid-back, California-style font mounted at a 45-degree angle just forward of my entry door.

Technically, I measure 19 feet from the backside of my bumper to the nose of my hitch.  That makes me a “Globetrotter.”

And, as Wally said, our mission was, “To place the great, wide world at your doorstep, for you who yearn to travel with all the comforts of home.” That means he was talking about doorstep.

In fact, Wally was always saying something, and he made sure someone was always around to hear it.

Wally, as the result of being in the right place at the right time, evolved into the ultimate salesman of traveling by trailer.  In doing so he created a state of mind for customers that proved irresistible to them.

Once sold and literally hooked-up, customers became faithful Airstreamers — just as Wally intended.

As a kid from Baker City, Ore., Wally Byam began his working life as a sheepherder — traveling and camping on the same countryside previously trod by early pioneers traveling west in covered wagons along the Oregon Trail.

Inspired by the wide-open vistas and history that surrounded him as he roamed and camped with his flocks of sheep, he went on to become a travel-trailer builder, herding customers into vacation travel.  His passion for sales and camping-while-traveling combined to inspire his customers to view the world with a new set of eyes.   With their eyes thus opened, he inspired his flock to also open their minds to everything new they experienced.

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