John Day Fossil Beds

John Day Fossil Beds National Monument is located in central eastern Oregon, and contains a lengthy and nearly unbroken record of geologic change and animal and plant evolution in North America.  For nearly a century, scientists have revealed fossils of land plants and animals dating back from 44 million to 5 million years ago.  This fossil record also captures evidence of dramatic climatic changes--this is displayed wonderfully in the Paleontology center, a visitor center, in the monument.  Unfortunately, it was a Monday, and the center was closed (sequestration?), so Helen could not see it.  Liz and I have visited before, and were looking forward to a return visit, but that's how it goes.

The monument is very spread out, and I drove Helen about 40 miles from our campsite to the Painted Hills Unit, since we have only one day at the Fossil Beds, and this unit is a "must see."  In its entirety, the Monumen has over 14,000 acres found in 3 widely separated units, the Sheep Rock Unit, Painted Hills Unit, and Clarno Unit, all within the John Day River Basin.  The Basin includes a large agricultural valley, and the river itself is the longest undammed tributary of the Columbia River.
Deep dramatic canyons of basalt, eroding ravines of fossil-bearing sediments, and striking outcrops can be found in the steep mountainous terrain.

The Painted Hills Unit is found by driving down a paved/gravel road to the first in a series of hillsides of deep red and yellows.

The first stop is at the picnic area--a grassy expanse with water and bathrooms, picnic tables, and shady trees.

The next stop is at a group of the painted hills, where a boardwalk leads you on a short walk around the hillocks:

Here you can see the clay-rich soil of these colorful hills are parched and cracked:

As you drive around the unit, you can see the striking colors of this unusual formation:

We easily achieved our pedometer goal of 10000 steps, even though we are still being careful of Helen's knee.

We returned to the picnic area for our lunch of crackers and cheese, then drove back to the town of John Day to do laundry, upload the prior blog at the McDonalds, and eat dinner at the Grubstake (prime rib for me--this is cattle country).

We are staying at the Clyde Halliday State Park, a lovely park with grassy areas around your campsite, plus electricity and water at each campsite.  We dumped at their dump station before setting up camp, so we had empty tanks for the two days we were here, plus the planned day at Goose lake.  The sound of the geese flying overhead  is soothing, and at least forty birds flew over my head in our campsite that morning as I had my coffee.  In the night, I had heard the raucous cries of coyotes--so loud and shrieking as I have never heard before, not even at the walnut ranch.  Neither had Liz heard such a sound--it lasted about 30 seconds and happened about five times.  The next night they were noisy again, but not so loud and screeching.

Tomorrow, we head to Goose Lake, where we are concerned about smoke in the air from the many Oregon lightning fires.  Our first stop is breakfast at the McDonalds, then off we will head.