Richard Weigel of the Island City Lions Club pilots the Pig Train in Haines during the town's Fourth of July Festivities. (Baker City Herald/S. John Collins)

The same onlooker might also have noticed a train of a different sort rolling round the bend.

Though maybe not until the conductor, Dick Weigel, shouted his version of the typical “All aboard” call.

“Pig train ride. SUWEE!” he called to the eight children, and several parents, eager to jump in one of pigs.

The song went on with the lyrics, “I hear the train a comin.’ It’s rollin’ ’round the bend ... ”

As if on cue, Weigel announced, “Pig train ride is off and running like a herd of pigs,” as he began making loops in the center of Front Street. “SUWEE!”

Molly Ragsdale has been dancing in the street for almost 30 years.

Except for last year.

Because of budget constraints the annual Miners Jubilee Street Dance did not happen in 2009.

This bothered Ragsdale, who owns the Chamealeon Cafe on Main Street in downtown Baker City.

“The one thing we remember from the Miners Jubilee is the street dance,” she said. “It’s been going on since I was 11 and probably before that,” she said.

She didn’t realize last year that there wasn’t going to be a dance.

Until there wasn’t one.

Bureau of Land Management employees begin one of the improvement projects Monday at the All Terrain Vehicle area east of Baker City. One large cattle guard and gate will replace two smaller guards. From left to right are Kate Vaughan, Mike Freeland, Bill Owens and Paul Barber in the Bobcat. (Baker City Herald/S. John Collins)

The money, from ATV permit fees, was part of the total of $34,624 that the BLM received from the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department for the fiscal year that ended Wednesday.

BLM contributed $21,000 to leverage the state grants, said Kevin McCoy of the BLM’s Baker Field Area office in Baker City.

Although the Baker Field Area extends all the way north to Asotin County, Wash., McCoy said the BLM spent the bulk of its state grant allotment this past fiscal year at Virtue Flat due to the volume of people who ride motorcycles and four-wheelers there.

The 3,500-acre area, between Ruckles Creek Road and Highway 86, is also open to hikers, mountain bikers and full-size vehicles.

BLM employee Kevin Hoskins said Virtue Flat “is unique on the east side of the state in that it allows open riding and rock crawling for Class I, Class II and Class III ATVs.”

On Tuesday, BLM seasonal employees under Hoskins’ supervision used a grader to spread pit-run gravel on a new parking lot near the main staging area just north of Ruckles Creek Road.

Andrew Bryan, a Baker City businessman and former vice mayor who served on the Baker City Council for 3fi years before resigning on May 28, has been appointed to the Baker School Board.

Bryan, 45, who has worked as an educational consultant for the past 20 years, applied for the seat after the call for volunteers was extended.

The two other applicants are Michael Howe, communications and government affairs specialist for the Oregon Trail Electric Consumers Cooperative, and Will Benson, Baker County Parole and Probation supervisor for the Baker County Sheriff’s Office.

The school board interviewed all three men during a special noon board meeting Thursday.

After the interviews the board voted unanimously, 4-0, to appoint Bryan to the year-long seat vacated by Deon Strommer, who resigned in June.

Although director Lynne Burroughs cast her vote along with fellow board members, she expressed reluctance to support Bryan, who had been in the minority of a 4-3 split between councilors during part of his City Council term.

The setting has changed, but the challenges remain the same for Walt Wegener as he settles into his new home in Baker City and his new office as the Baker School District’s new superintendent.

“I stepped out of one pan and into another and the heat was still on,” he said in a Wednesday interview at the Baker City Herald office between moving chores.

He spent four hours at the district office Tuesday and another hour there Wednesday. Thursday, July 1, was his first official full day on duty.

The board chose Wegener from three finalists who traveled to Baker City for interviews this spring in their bid to replace Don Ulrey, who served the district as superintendent for nearly eight years before retiring in April.

In early June, flood-swollen North Pine Creek destroyed a 500-foot section of the Wallowa Mountain Loop Road north of Highway 86.

The Loop Road, also known as Forest Road 39, connects Highway 86 with Wallowa County.

A reader board at the Interstate 84 and Highway 86 junction in north Baker City reads “Forest Road 39 Closed 60 Miles Ahead.”

The dilemma, said Debi Bainter of the Baker Chamber of Commerce, is the possibility that some travelers, on seeing the reader board, assume that Highway 86, which leads to Oxbow and Hells Canyon Dam, is closed.

So your faithful half-ton pickup truck has lately seemed, well, a trifle wimpy.

You could upgrade to a heavy duty one-ton model.

But why not dispense with such half-hearted measures altogether and just get yourself a dump truck.

A real dump truck.

One that can haul five cubic yards of whatever it is you need to haul.

Which is enough to pretty much bury your garden-variety pickup.

Or, speaking of gardens, enough topsoil to start a plot of sufficient size to keep your whole neighborhood in vegetables all summer.

Baker City has the truck.

But you can still find fresh vegetables, fruit, art, handmade soaps and more at the Wednesday markets, held from 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. at Geiser-Pollman Park.

Rather than spread a few vendors over two markets, the board decided to consolidate all into one market.

They tried to keep Saturdays.

“We advertised for five weeks for vendors,” said Ellie Feeley, market manager.

But no one responded.

Their plan is to make the Wednesday market an event, with lots of vendors, live music and special events throughout the summer, including the annual watermelon giveaway, a salsa festival, a pie contest and a harvest festival to end the season.

To Slovenia, to be specific.

Parker, who is the Oregon State University Extension Service forester in Baker County, participated in the weeklong conference of the International Union of Forest Research at Bled, Slovenia.

But that was only part of his journey.

Before the conference Parker also toured forests in Austria and Hungary.

He returned with ideas on how the Europeans are working to become more energy independent and tips on safety.

And one experience that left him stunned.

Parker said that in the first part of the 20th century the Slovenes heavily logged their forests, leaving areas looking more like deserts.

Then, about 100 years ago, a group of Slovenes set out to fix this problem. They walked through the forest, dug holes and planted millions of trees.

Sierra Bingham, 10, disembarks from a plane at the Baker City Municipal Airport Saturday. Bingham, who had a heart transplant four years ago, was returning from a checkup at a hospital in Palo Alto, Calif. She was folwn free of charge by Angel Flight pilots Joe and Rosemary Pelissier. (Baker City Herald/Russell Vineyard)

Now imagine that she needs to do this as often as twice a week.

The cost for each round-trip could top $100 for fuel alone.

But what if an angel offered this child a free ride?

An angel disguised as a single-engine airplane.

The idea isn’t unheard of.

It isn’t even uncommon.

In 2006 Sierra Bingham, then 6, was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy. The condition caused the Haines girl’s heart to grow too fast, weakening that vital organ.