Day 1
Loaded up in Newberg, OR and headed out at a reasonable hour, just in time to hit traffic in Portland. Headed up the gorge with a snack break at Celilo Park on the Columbia River. Headed South on Hwy 97 with a left turn at Shaniko. Just out of Shaniko we meet a Harley chick standing in the middle of the road with her bike on its side. The bike was so heavy and loaded with camping gear she couldn’t get it tipped back up – we were able to get it righted with both of us lifting and she was on her way. Yikes, I’m glad I wasn’t following right behind her.
A few miles later we arrived at our first major stop being the John Day Fossil Beds Clarno Unit.
Hiked all the hikes and saw all the sites. Pretty dang cool! The little guy just wanted to crawl and climb on everything, so he had a great time. After seeing what we could see – we headed on to Fossil and south a little to Bear Hollow County Park – pretty nice campground with ZERO people at it. The campground must have suffered some wind/winter damage, as there was signs of downed trees and an ongoing cleanup effort, but everything was still useable. And did I say we had the whole place to ourselves.
Bear Hollow:
http://www.orparks.org/a_oregonparks/wheeler.htm
Day 2
Left the campground and headed southeast to John Day. We toured the Kam Wah Chung Museum and played in the adjoining park for a while. The museum is well worth the stop. Quite amazing that it is still there and in one piece after all these years. After John Day we headed south the Canyon City and hit the Grant County Historical Museum, pretty old school with some downright creepy stuff in it. After the historical museum we headed back northwest to Clyde Holliday State Park - it is probably the cleanest, most park like landscaped state park I have seen in Oregon, flower beds and lawn edging…. Way to close to the highway – but they have showers and that was a requirement at least one night on the trip…
Kam Wah Chung:
http://www.oregonstateparks.org/park_8.php
Grant County Historical Museum:
http://www.gchistoricalmuseum.com/
Clyde Holliday:
http://www.oregonstateparks.org/park_11.php
Day 3
From John Day we headed west to hit more Fossils. We stopped at the Mascall Formation Overlook viewpoint, then on to the Thomas Condon Museum.
The museum is cool, but the hiking the trails and seeing the stuff in person is much better. Just a short way up the road from the museum is the Blue Basin Area with a few cool trails and plenty of awesome scenery. We hiked the Island of Time trail and it was pretty amazing. After the hike we headed to the Cant Ranch Museum had lunch there and hiked down along the river and saw all the sites there.
After getting our fill of Fossils we headed west towards Prineville and found a cool camping spot up the Crooked River. We ended up picking the Lone Pine campground as it only had a few other campers in it and looked like our style. It really has a lone pine tree. Very nice spot on the river and very quite.
John Day Fossil Beds:
http://www.nps.gov/joda/index.htm
Lone Pine:
http://www.blm.gov/or/resources/recreation/site_info.php?siteid=141
Day 4
We didn’t do much on the last day of our trip. We took gravel roads from Prineville west to just north of Smith Rock State park then headed to the Peter Skeen Ogden rest stop on Hwy 97. We had a snack break there and walked out to the old bridge. Despite the amazing scenery and the engineering of the bridge my son was most impressed with the sprinklers at the rest stop.
After that we meet a friend in Redmond for a BBQ and hung around there for a few hours – then made the long, slow and boring drive home to Newberg.
