Greetings!

Welcome to the virtual home of Dan and Lin Dzurisin. You can see more of our favorite photos like the ones below by clicking on Photography in the Navigation Bar to the right. Read about our latest adventures in the Blog below or in the Trips/Adventures section. The Genealogy Project section (password required) has lots of information about family members, including biographies and photos. Check back often to see what we're up to, and please sign our Guestbook!

What Does Our Son Do All Day?

Recently Notre Dame put together a feature video snippet on the work that Jason is pursuing in Dr. Jessica Hellmann's lab. Click HERE to view it.

ALOHA From Hawaii

Aloha!

Just wanted to begin sharing some of the awesome things we've been seeing here in Hawaii.

More to come later!!

April , 2008 SPRING HAS NOT YET SPRUNG AT MALHEUR WILDLIFE REFUGE

This spring included a return trip to Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in southeast Oregon near Burns for the annual Migratory Bird Festival. The festival was one week later this year than last, and our experience was a total opposite to our initial visit last year.

We found out that this year the snow hadn't melted in the high country yet. Spring snowmelt typically floods ditches and farmers' fields. Birds feed on grain in the fields and other food sources before they fly on to their next destination. This year many biirds hadn't stopped at Malheur because it was too cold and dry. As a result, the numbers and types of birds were greatly reduced this year.  

The friends we made last year at the Narrows Resturant told us they had an extremely hard winter this year. The ranchers lost many calves during the winter - one lost 400. It was still below freezing each night we were there. It snowed and sleeted several times each day.  We went on adventures during breaks in the weather. We'd roll up to an area when we finally found some birds, Lin tucked in a blanket, heater running, shoot pictures, quickly roll up windows, and roll on.

In spite of the weather, we had three redeeming things happen while visiting Malheur this year:

1. We got a chance to meet with Dan Gooding's family when they were on their way home from the Bull Riding Championships in Idaho. We shared a ride before dark to the Headquarters & Golden Eagle's nest with Dan. Dan had taken a field work course at Malheur several years. ago. He has been an inspiration for our visits to Malheur.

2. We got a chance to renew friendships with the locals and owners of the Narrows Restuarant, where we regularly ate our meals. They made incredible baked potato soup just for us while we were visiting. Lin and Dan ate their fair share of wonderful peach or cherry pie ala mode while waiting for weather to clear, and get hot chocolate to warm up.

3. We had an incredible chance offered to us to attend a branding of 87 calves at a local ranch.  It was an opportunity to appreciate the incredibly hard work they do every day, regardless of the weather. Ranch families from the area all chip in to help get these chores done quickly. They took time to visit with us while we were there and shared beer and root beer with us when they were done. We dropped off a round of drinks for them to share at their next branding.

March 16-22, 2008

The past two weekends have included some spring-like weather, and we used the opportunity to visit the Sauvie Island Wildlife Area and the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge. Here are a few of the photos from those trips.

March 15, 2008 - Sauvie Island, Oregon

The Ides of March brought showers and sunbreaks to the Portland-Vancouver area. We spent the day on Sauvie Island, at the confluence of the Wilammette and Columbia Rivers. There were snow geese, Canada geese, and lesser sandhill cranes in abundance. We also saw several mature and immature bald eagles, including the one pictured below, perched in trees with swelling spring buds.

March 2, 2008 - Oregon Coast Aquarium, Newport Oregon

This weekend we visited the Hatfield Marine Science Center and the Oregon Coast Aquarium, both in Newport, Oregon. Lin was able to shake hands with a giant Pacific octopus at the science center and get even closer to a prehistoric shark at the aquarium - as you can see in the photo below.

February 24, 2008

On a trip up the Columbia River Gorge this weekend, we saw a group of about 20 bighorn sheep near John Day dam. Most were juveniles like those in the photos below; the group was led by two young rams. We've seen bighorn sheep in the same location several times before.

January 25, 2008 - Artic Loon of Clatsop County

A lone arctic loon in Blind Slough, near Brownsmead, Oregon, has been causing quite a stir among birders lately. The species breeds during summer in Alaska and across northern Canada. Its winter range includes the Pacific Coast from Alaska to Mexico, but it typically rests on open ocean during migration. We were alerted to its presence in Blind Slough by a friend, Lyn Topinka, who provided detailed directions that enabled us to find and photograph the bird today. It was cold enough that smaller sloughs and ponds in the area were frozen, but Blind Slough was open and we were fortunate to observe the arctic loon feeding there between the boat launch and fish pens. On the way home, we stopped at the Tillamook Cheese Factory for some ice cream and curds - a tasty ending to an eventful day. Here are a few of today's photos. 

January 23, 2008 - Dan was in the field at Mount St. Helens today

The USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory took advantage of a sunny day today to do some long-overdue field work at Mount St. Helens. Dan and colleague Jon Major repaired time-lapse cameras at Sugar Bowl and Brutus, two sites on the northeast rim of the crater. Here's a view of Mount Rainier from Brutus. I love my job!

January 21, 2008 - A sunny, brisk day at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge

For the first time in weeks, today dawned clear and brisk, with temperatures in the 20s. We made three circuits of the Auto Tour Route, River "S" Unit, Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge, and brought back good photos of ice-skating coots, a great egret taking a vole, red-tailed hawk, and northern flicker. Spring is just around the corner!

December 31, 2007 -- AWESOME---INCREDIBLE---TOTALLY SWEET---RAD---KICK B----End Of Year !!!

We had an incredible ending to our 2007 year! First, we visited C. Dan Miller and John Pallister at their homes adjacent to Parkside Airpark. What a sweet setup! Every house with a hangar, and every homeowner a pilot with one or more planes and a short taxi to a private runway. Morning fog threatened to shut down any flying, but by midday the skies cleared and we were on our way. C. Dan brought us up to date on his latest project, an RV-8 that he's custom building for a pilot friend, Dave Harlow. Dan is an amazing craftsman, and his passion for flying shows in his work. After the tour, he and Jason boarded Dan's "Volcano Cowboy" RV-8 and rocketed off for a tour of Mount St. Helens and surroundings. We took a quick drive through nearby Lewisville State Park, then returned to Parkview to find John Pallister tinkering in his hangar. When we mentioned that Jason was airborne with C. Dan, JP asked if we would like to catch up with them. We jumped at the chance, and soon we were flying JP's Cessna 210 in tight formation with C. Dan's RV-8. What a kick! Back on the ground, everyone was all smiles as we headed off for the rest of our day.

Check out a slideshow of the flight!

We rang in the new year with a party at Steve and Eleanore Voreis' house (Jill's folks). Good friends, conversation, a highly competitive session of "Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?", and a rousing set of Guitar Hero 2 made for an enjoyable evening. We toasted in the new year with champagne and sparkling cider - a wonderful start to a promising year!

December 30, 2007 - thedzurisins.com is launched!

With Jason's help, we've become pro jimdo users and redirected our URL, thedzurisins.com, to jimdo. So the ad on our free page has disappeared and users can now access our site by typing www.thedzurisins.com or simply thedzurisins.com. Next...more content.

December 28, 2007

We toured the River "S" Unit at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge with Jason three times in the past three days, made a trip to the snow near Mount St. Helens, and visited waterfalls in the Columbia River Gorge. A few of Jason's photos are featured below.

December 25, 2007

Merry Christmas!  We now have full possession of our site, created by our fantastic, wonderful, intelligent, spectacular daughter-in-law Jill and her husband Jason. 

December 25th, 2007 - Site Unveiled!

Merry Christmas to all...especially to the new owners of this page! We hope you enjoy it and make it your own. We look forward to seeing it grow and flesh-out over time as your photo gallery and other pursuits continue!

~Your kids (Jason and Jill)

December 24th, 2007

Final touches are being applied before the big transfer to the rightful owners (Christmas!!). Added to the About us section, finished adding the slideshow links, and put in some work on the Genealogy section.

December 21st, 2007

thedzurisins.com is born! Then comes the major hitch. Even though jimdo has ads on all free pages, they still will not allow free users to re-direct from a custom domain. This is less than sastisfactory in my opinion since their competitors, Google, allow this with no issue. So, for now we will have to decide whether or not to upgrade the account to ditch the ads and allow the shiny new domain to be used. C'est la Vie.

December 20th, 2007

Took a first stab at getting the Genealogy Project section navigation fleshed out. Currently it takes advantage of all 3 layers of navigation offered. We could probably use a 4th, but I think that this makes good sense as is.

Also, we have been working on including full-screen slideshow links to each of the photo gallery offerings. This is really nice in that it will allow users to get even more resolution if they so choose. So, keep your eyes out at the bottom of any gallery for the links.

December 18, 2007

Found these great videos (1, 2, 3) of some of the bird species of one of our favorite places, Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge! Great work Cathlapootl!

December 17th, 2007

Trips section gets some attention. Another neat aspect of the content selection here is that we are able to lay out our photos in several different "themesets". So, the grand concept is to have them linked by date in the "Photography" section, and then be able to go into more content depth in the "Trips" section. So, if you want to see what we have been up to lately, check in on the Photography galleries. If you want a little bit more content and background or a more "theme" based experience, check the "Trips" section. The "Oregon Coast" section has gotten most of the attention thus far, but the others will be coming along shortly!

December 6th, 2007

RSS Feeds section added and About Us section fleshed out. The RSS feeds section is another neat deal in that content that we are interested in will automatically be streamed to that page for easy consumption. Current content sources are Notre Dame Athletics from ESPN and the science page of the New York Times. Brilliant!

December 5th, 2007

Trips, and Photography sections added. The more I use this site, the more I love it. The ability to auto-stream photosets from Flickr based on Tags is just plain slick! Also, the ability to password protect certain areas is really a deep feature. Keep it up Jimdo!

December 4th, 2007

This site is live! The grand experiment has begun.