The Oregon Desert

Thanks to a tip from Dad, who apparently knew this place existed (but turns out had no idea how it's set up) we decided to spend a weekend last August out in the Oregon desert visiting the John Day fossil beds national monument. 3 days of fun in the high desert, and I was not prepared for how cool it was.

The John Day fossil beds are organized into 3 "units" or parks. The Painted Hills unit, the Sheep Rock unit, and the Clarno Unit. The Painted Hills looked the most interesting to us, so we decided to stay in Mitchell, OR, 5 miles outside the unit. It's about a 5 hour drive from PDX, although we took our time and made a quick pitstop in the Cove Palisades state park outside Madras.

The Cove Palisades is a section of the Crooked River that has been damned and is also a big canyon. We did a short hike along the rim as well as a short drive. We were irrationally worried about rattlesnakes, which proved funny since we never saw one the entire trip, but spent the entire trip jumping at every noise that sounded vaguely rattle-like.

The Dam

Mt Jefferson approves

Done with the Cove Palisades, which seemed like a boating place to me not a hiking spot, we drove another 2 hours east of Madras to our place in Mitchell. Mitchell was basically a street. Not as tiny as Prospect, Oregon, but not much bigger. I was enjoying the hell out of myself, because the Oregon desert is nothing like the gorge or national forests, it actually has people living in it on farms, but they are spread few and far between. There were cattle ranches, dead animal bones, tumbleweeds, it was straight out of the movies but real. Despite the people and private land, it felt more wild than any other place I have ever been. Even in National Parks, with all the wildnerness, there still felt like there was a system of rangers and a sense of organization. Out here not so much. It was very pure wild. The people were grizzled and tough, everyone drove a truck, and you could probably get shot wandering into the wrong area. It was a little scary to a city boy.

But it was also super charming. Despite our motel owner looking like a redneck Stephen King villian, he was incredibly nice and our hotel was the cutest hotel I have ever stayed in. It wasn't a motel, it was a small apartment. Kitchen, two bedrooms, tv room, it was so full of character it hurt. Wonderful place to stay. I think it was called the Skyline motel. Mitchell was also cute, half boarded up buildings, half sweet country folk who opened and closed shop at leisure. There was one gas pump in town, and it was straight out of the 50's, coin operated. The owner operated it only when she was in the area. It was hilarious. Yet even out here in the middle of nowhere the general store was packed with foofy craft beer. I love Oregon.

We dropped our stuff off and went to explore the Painted Hill unit.

The Painted Hills are surprisingly small, kind of tucked away in between bigger hills, but they are neat. It's like those sand art bottles, when you pour different colored sands into a bottle at different levels to make a colorful rainbow of layers, but in real life.

wooo

There is a small trail to the top overlooking them.
There is a small trail off to the south that explores a very red hill.

TEXTURE. It's all dried clay.

Painted Cove trail

Painted Cove

Painted cove SOME MORE

There is also a slightly longer half mile trail to the top of a nearby ridge where you can look down on the hills. This was the best spot in the unit and also the most isolated. It was hot, and we were the only people fit enough to bother going up.

We spent the night eating local Mitchell fare and sleeping comfortably. We got up, ate breakfast at the local diner, and took off for Sheep Rock, the biggest of the units. Sheep Rock is further divided into smaller units. The biggest area is the Sheep Rock area proper. Sheep rock is a big mountain with a spikey top that stands tall next to the John Day river. Nearby is the historic Cant Ranch which you can walk around on, and the official visitor center of the monument, a big house full of fossils and explanations of the area's history and geology.

A fossil outside the visitor center

A hilarious statue inside the center

View east from an overlook to the south of Sheep Rock

The canyon road to Sheep Rock

CRAZY ROCKS

Look at that 3rd deer in the mural. LOOK AT IT'S FACE

Busted old jalopy on the Cant Ranch

Sheep Rock and John Day river

Cant ranch and Sheep Rock

There was also a little overlook path to see Sheep Rock.

Further up the road was the coolest section of the whole trip and our only real "hike". I've seen it called Turtle Cove, Blue Basin, and a bunch of other things but the signs say Blue Basin so I'm going with that. Blue Basin is a section of hill that eroded out to expose blue rock underneath. There is a short trail that goes into the heart of the basin, and it looks like an alien planet.

There is also a 3 mile hike around it in the surrounding hills. You start up a super steep climb, then slowly make your way around to an overlook behind the basin, then back down the north side. If you are interested in the hike it is totally worth it, and I would advise doing it counter clockwise as we did. Otherwise you get no views whatsoever for the first mile.

Past that section there is one more park with two short hikes, a good way to spend 30 minutes looking at the desert.

We then drove north through Spray, OR and back through the mountains to Mitchell for the night. We decided to get some beer from the store, drive back to the Painted Hills, and watch the sunset. It was the best thing we did all trip, and I'll remember how peaceful and beautiful that area was forever.

The next day we drove north. We made a quick pitstop in Shaniko, OR, a ghost town. A ghost town with some people in it. False advertising. It was pretty though. Then we drove north along the high plains into the Columbia gorge at Biggs Junction, took a pittstop on the Rowena Crest and in the Dalles, then arrived home happy and tanned.

View from Rowena Crest

Shaniko the Ghost town

Ghost town piano

The road to Rowena crest

Da gorge

John Day was a big checkmark in areas I want to explore out here. With the recent trip to Bend and Newberry Volcano outlined later, my list of things to see in Oregon/PacNW is getting checked off and will soon become list of things to see again.
So far, I've hit
-Crater Lake
-Cannon Beach and northern Oregon Coast
-Mt. Hood
-Columbia Gorge (in spades!)
-Silver Falls state park
-John Day
-Bend
-Newberry Volcano
-Smith Rock and Cove Palisades
-St Helens/ Lava tunnels

Things I still need to get to
-Oregon Coast trip (Hopefully in august, that's the plan)
-The Wallowa Mountains and Hells Canyon
-Mt. Rainier
-Olympic national park
-Fort Rock and Southern Oregon
-Mt. Jefferson