Gary-Summer: Sept 18, 2021 - From Ontario or Prinedale, visiting John Day National Monument

Saturday, September 18, 2021

Sept 18, 2021 - From Ontario or Prinedale, visiting John Day National Monument

Title: Sept 18, 2021 - From Ontario or Prinedale, visiting John Day National Monument
Hike Info : Description : Extra Photo's : Animals

Hike Info:

Trail head: Blue Basin Parking Lot
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

Description:

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

Blue Mound

, 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.

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.