Title: Sept 18, 2021 - From Ontario or Prinedale, visiting John Day National Monument
Hike Info : Description : Extra Photo's : Animals
Type: Hiking : Car
Trail: Island in Time
Destination: Blue Basin
Distance: 1.32 miles 1
Elevation Rise: 347'
Descent: 348‘
Maximum Elevation: 3,409'
Hike Info:
Trail head: Foree Parking area
Type: Hiking
Trail: Flood of Fire
Distance: 0.8 miles 1
Elevation Rise: 163'
Descent: 162‘
Maximum Elevation: 2,301'
1All data and maps came from Google Earth
Car Mileage: 266 miles
Woke up at 7am, local time. Even though we are in Oregon, this sliver of Oregon is on Mountain Time. None of us are exactly a bundle of energy. We take care of some business. Also Andrea takes care of getting us a room for tonight in Prineville-no not the one outside of Fresno, that is Pinedale. This one is a little ways away from Bend.
We are a bit anxious about Bend, mostly because of the smoke in the area. We will need to play that one by ear. But today, we are not worried about Bend. The first thing is to get breakfast from the restaurant attached to the hotel. This is a bit more convoluted than it sounds. The hotel gave us voucher tickets. There is a causeway to the restaurant, but you can also go in by the front entrance. This leads to confusion about who is next and the like. The restaurant is pretty busy, so the wait to even get in our order is slow. But once we get our food-take out to eat in our room-the food is tasty.
After breakfast, we are on our way, leaving about 10:30. It takes a few minutes to get out of Ontario. But once we hit HIghway 26, we go along at a pretty good clip. The lands around are farms, sage brush, and hills. We listen to a book Sherri has checked out, Anxious People by Fredrik Backman-the same author who wrote A Man Called Ove. So far I am not enthralled with the book, too much going back and forth with it, he changes the plot in the middle of a story within it, such as the gender of the bank robber. So you do not get much consistency in it. But Sherri likes it, and I will admit, there is much to be said for this. Backman does know how to put words together to make them amusing.
We have passed town after small town and are starting to rise up into the Malheur National Forest. Pine trees start to replace the sage. But so does wet pavement from the start of rain replace the dry. Hopefully some of this wetness is calming some of the fires in Oregon. I do not think they will do much for anything south of Northern California. The rain is pretty strong. So we only stop once at a roadside exhibit. Even then it is just to get a shot of Andrea and Sherri in a covered wagon. The “covered” wagon is very leaky, so not much time is spent there.
View from the John Day Visitor Center
We continue on to the town of
John
Day
where we find a park to have lunch-in the car, last night’s pizza.
Interesting park though. There is a building on the National
Record of Historical Places,
Why? Because it is the best example of a Chinese Mercantile in the
United States. Whole not going in-it was closed, the
Kam Wah Chung & Co. Museum
has an exhibit that shows why the Chinese came to this area and why
they left. Interesting stuff.
And then we are on our way. As we head west, the rain lets up. In about an hour, we come to the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. There are three parts to this monument, spread out over this area of Oregon, maybe about 20 miles apart.. We are at the Sheep Rock area, where the Visitor Center is. We indulge ourselves, spending about an hour here, after all we gained back an hour coming west and now are on Pacific Daylight Time. Feels like it is almost home.
Andrea and Gary Sherri and Andrea Going into the Blue Basin Coming back from the Blue Basin
Anyway, the Visitor Center is
well worth going to and spending the time. If we were there on a
weekday, I think we would have been able to watch the lab work of
paleontologists. As it was, we contented ourselves with looking over
exhibits showing the various fossils they have dug up in the area, as
well as the history of the diggings and findings-we found out that
they no longer dig, but let erosion reveal the fossils. Is this area
so rich that they can do it? One person who we were very much
enamoured with was Thomas
Condon,
who really set off the scientific exploration of the area. He was a
minister in the 1850’s who seemed to have a pretty good grasp of
the relationship between science and religion-but I would be
interested in reading a bit more about this than the NPS signs.
I had asked the ranger on duty, Parker was her name, if she had an hour and a half in the area, what would she do to make her want to come back. She said go up to the Blue Basin and do a hike there Then with the left over time, head further up the road to Foree. So that is what we plan on doing.
Ending point of the Flood of Fire Trail
Blue Basin is about 2 or 3
miles up the road from the Visitor Center. We take the shorter, 1.4
mile round trip, 600’ rise trail. The trail is called the Island in
Time Trail. It goes up a wash, to someplace called Turtle
Cove,
which in times past had the name of Blue Basin (there is another
place in southern Oregon which has that name as well.) It goes up at
a pretty good clip, zig-zagging across a ravine. Whenever it crosses
the ravine, there is a steel bridge-which raises the question of why
not wood? It splits from the longer loop-about 3+ miles-and continues
up the ravine. The sides have a bluish green tint to them, like
Parker said they would. She had indicated with the cloud cover today,
the coloring would really stand out. It reminds me of some of the
draws we have walked up at Death
Valley
,
only thing, these are much wider. Also the draws at Death Valley are
pretty flat until you approach the end. These go up the hillside. As
we observe the ravine’s sides, we see what the exhibits at the
Visitor Center were talking about with the strata of sediment,
indicating eras of the earth. At the end, we meet a photographer, who
takes our picture, and his dog Tucker. We talk for a bit, then
return. Much easier going down.Blue Mound
When we get back to the car, we head over to Foree. There are two trails. We start with the half mile round trip. This is the Flood of Fire Trail. It leads up to the side of a ravine, where we could look into the layers once again. The sign at the top had a piece of spoken poetry. To Andrea it was meaningful, to me it was more like modern poetry which did not strike me-am I becoming a crotchety old man? More color and well worth the short walk.
 |
| Andrea and Sherri admiring the Blue Mound |
When we come back down, we
decide to go to the other trail-only a third of a mile. There are
more greens and blues along the sides of the mountain. But what is
the draw to this trail? There is a mound of green rising up about
30-40’ high. Gives us a time to just look and wonder how it came to
be. Then it is back to the car.
If it was earlier, I was
tempted to go up the road and loop back to highway 26. But I think we
are all ready to get to the hotel and the weather looks like more
rain. So back to Highway 26. Sherri puts on her book and we listen
until we get to Prineville a little before 7pm. After checking in, I
think it was the Best
Western,
we wonder, what do we eat? Decided on a place called Club
Prineville-a
steak place. Sherri and Andrea split a salad and I have a chicken
sandwich. That is enough for us-we eat in. After taking a shower, we
retire around 10pm.
Extra Photo's
 |
| Looking down into the John Day River Valley |
 |
| Blue Cliffs above Blue Basin |
 |
| Looking up the trail to Blue Basin |
 |
| Looking up the wash towards Blue Basin |
 |
| Sherri Walking the Island of Time Trail |
 |
| Looking back into the John Day River area |
 |
| Bridges over the wash |
 |
| Large Blue Mound |
 |
| Almost back to car after hiking Island of Time Trail |
 |
| Sun, Clouds, and Land |
 |
| Blue Basin |
 |
| Gary and Andrea walking back down the Island of Time Trail |
 |
| Andrea, Gary and Sherri at the Blue Basin |
 |
| Blue Basin |
 |
| Cliffs by Flood of Fire Trail |
 |
| Sherri, Andrea, and Gary at the end of the Flood of Fire Trail |
Animals
