>La Grande Observer | Union and Wallowa Counties' News Leader

The historic Eagle Cap Excursion Train and Winding Waters Rafting announce the opening of the River to Rails Expedition season.

The experience will include a raft trip down the roadless Wallowa River from Minam to Rondowa, the confluence with the Grande Ronde River, where rafters meet up with the Eagle Cap Excursion Train.

Rafters leave the water and climb aboard the train for a scenic ride back up the canyon to Minam.

Morgan Lake and Yaquina Bay share little in common in terms of fishing opportunities.Morgan Lake has rainbow trout and catfish. Yaquina Bay has rockfish, crab, chinook salmon, perch and sturgeon fisheries.

Yaquina Bay is accessible year round. Morgan Lake, by contrast, is often covered by ice at least four months a year.

Anglers never need more than 15-pound test line at Morgan Lake but might need 80-pound test line to pull in Yaquina Bay sturgeon.

COVE — Northeast Oregonians have a strong sense of place, whether they were born here or relocated to the area intentionally.

The Blue and Wallowa mountains offer boundless recreational opportunities, and the country lifestyle is attractive to many transplants. It’s no wonder Union County institutions like Ascension School Camp in Cove, with the Eagle Cap Wilderness as a backdrop, has attracted several modern day pioneers. The camp is a longstanding Northeast Oregon tradition, having started in 1924.

Swine raisers await their turn at the Eastern Oregon Livestock Show’s junior auction Saturday in Union.

The total amount earned was up over last year, though it did not set a record, said John Leithner, co-chairman of the auction.

IMNAHA GRANDEUR: The fishing season for spring chinook on the Imnaha River opens Saturday and ends July 12. Eighty percent of the salmon returning to the Imnaha will be hatchery fish, predict biologists. The ODFW projects that 5,000 adult spring chinook will be in the Imnaha River - The Observer/PHIL BULLOCK

On Saturday morning, anglers will waste little time getting to the banks of the Wallowa and Imnaha rivers.

Anglers will be flocking to the rivers for the opening of a one-month hatchery spring chinook fishing season.

Add a new fish to the list of those in Morgan Lake — steelhead.

A total of 198 tiny steelhead were released into Morgan Lake May 20 by students in Michelle Cregger’s sixth grade Nature’s Studies classes. The fish are fry about a half inch long.

Cregger’s students had been raising the steelhead for about six weeks after receiving 400 fertilized eggs from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Wallowa Hatchery.

ELGIN — A new chapter was added to a cherished tradition at Elgin’s Stella Mayfield School recently.

The 26th edition of Stella Mayfield’s Outdoor School was conducted at the Blue Mountain 4-H Center. About 28 of the school’s sixth-graders attended.

It’s two nights and three days the sixth-graders will remember long after they have forgotten facts they learned in the classroom about history and English.

COVE — A convention of about 275 Episcopalians, including delegations from Church of the Redeemer in Pendleton,

St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in La Grande and St. Stephen’s in Baker City, on May 23 affirmed The Rt. Rev. Bavi Edna “Nedi” Rivera as the first-ever Provisional Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Eastern Oregon.

Rivera, who also is Bishop Suffragan — assistant to the bishop — in the Diocese of Olympia, will serve one-third time in Eastern Oregon, which has been without a bishop since The Rt. Rev. William O. Gregg resigned in 2007 to become assistant bishop of North Carolina.

Swimmers frolic on Memorial Day at the Forest Cove Warm Springs Pool in Cove. The Observer/DICK MASON

People seeking sites to chill need look no further than three public pool sites in Union County plus Lehman Hot Springs, 41 miles southwest of La Grande, and the Sam-O Swim (YMCA Pool) Center in Baker City.

Here is information about prices and hours...

Local residents may not realize that aliens are lurking in their backyards. These creatures have big red eyes, a dome-shaped head, can hover in flight and come equipped with sharp claws. Even their name, Streptopelia decaocto, sounds like something you’d see on the roster at Area 51. Their language resembles the cooing of an adolescent sasquatch.

But, before you dial the Men in Black, I must confess this tongue and cheek introduction is a bit misleading. The Eurasian collared dove is, indeed, alien to our neighborhoods, but seems to be a fairly benign addition to the bird feeding station. And, so far, no dove to human abductions have been recorded.