Paint me Happy

I woke up in the city park in Mitchell, Oregon. Turns out that for a small fee you can pitch a tent there. You can even park your RV in the parking lot. Now that seems like a great idea for a small town to make a bit of cash. They have clean toilets available to everyone, with a donation box on the outside. I donated. It’s the little things that make me super happy.

Also happy because of a random stroke of luck. It was a warm night and I set up the tent with no rain cover to allow the air to blow through. There was another tent pitched in the park, and soon a gruff old man arrived and went to that tent. Though it would ruin my breeze, I put up the rain cover for privacy. The skies were clear blue that day, and forecast to be clear blue the next day, so I was surprised that the park was doused in a rainshower in the middle of the night. Nothing got wet because of my privacy cover. Yay!

Six miles away from Mitchell is one of my FAVOURITE things in Oregon: the Painted Hills. I found coffee in Mitchell on my way out of town (For $2.50! All the drive-thru coffee I found in eastern Oregon was amazingly low-priced and delicious.)

Oh! Can you believe I forgot my camera?! I mean, the Kam Wah Chung museum would have been so much better with good resolution images, but THIS would have been astonishingly good with a good camera. Gosh, I can’t believe how often I forget to bring the camera. It should be automatic by now…but no…. I could kick myself. Everything you see here is from my cell phone.

At the end of the paved road, visitors take a left onto a gravel road into the main park area. I skipped the information board and parking lot and picnic area, because I’ve been here before. I headed right in with the goal of hiking all the trails I could find before continuing on my road trip home.

First up is likely the most dramatic, most famous, and most hiked trail: The Painted Hills Overlook Trail. This day was the most undramatic I’ve ever seen it, because the bold colourful stripes face West, and the sun rises in the East, so it was all in shadow. As you see in the photo above, the Painted Hills of Oregon get their name because of the unique geology of the area causing stripes of colour to be splashed across all the hillsides in this valley. It is gorgeous whenever I go, and looks different on different days in different weather.

Across the valley from me was a trail I think I have never hiked before, the Carroll Rim Trail. After the quick and easy 1/2 mile starter hike, I next went to the most challenging hike of the day. Another short one, but rather steep at first, and it felt good to get my blood pumping after several days in the car.

I enjoyed the views and the wide variety of wildflowers (even the purple grass was so beautiful I included it in the wildflower gallery) on my way up the steep slope.

Once you reach the top, then it’s an easy trek out along the top of the ridge to another overlook site with a bench in case you need it.

The trip back down was easy: all downhill and still pleasantly cool in the morning. I headed next for that lake, thinking I had never been there. But the parking for my next trail was right next to the water, so I must have been there before because this is my favourite trail of the park, and I’ve been here multiple times. I guess the geology blinded my memory of anything else nearby.

This is my favourite trail at the Painted Hills because this is the one that brings you right up close to educate you about what you’re seeing. Feet on the hills will ruin them for years so no one is allowed to walk on them. The only way to really get close enough to examine them is with these boardwalks. Even then: do not touch. Just look.

These colours are the result of historical environments. About 33 million years ago, iron rich volcanic ash fell on this landscape. Weathering processes slowly changed new ash layers into fertile soils under forests and swamps. Oxidizing irons then stained the clay soils. The red paleosols indicate a warm and moist environment where the soil was usually damp. Ponds and lakes would have dotted the area. Rainfall would have been 31-53 inches (800-1350 mm) a year.

Yellow and tan soils indicate a drier environment than the red layers, where standing water would not have been present in much of the area. Rainfall would have been between 23 and 47 inches (600-1200 mm). The black spots seen on some slopes are caused by manganese concentrations, indicators of some sort of plant that fixed manganese in the soil. Today’s average rainfall here in John Day is 12 inches (300 mm).

As you guessed from the name of the place (John Day Fossil Beds National Monument), there must be fossils. And there are! The best places to learn about fossils are in a different part of the park where I did not go on this trip, but let me plug Oregon one more time. The John Day basin has an excellently preserved plant and animal fossil record that spans 40 million years. These are from the later Eocene (45 million years ago) up to the late Miocene (about 5 million years ago). There is a modern, high quality visitor information center, and many interpretive trails over a truly enormous area in central Oregon. Do consider stopping at one or more of the multiple sites if you ever pass through.

Sans camera, I could only spot the shiny white rocks on the hill and assume they held fossils. There was no way for me to see anything without my zoom lens. A post fence was erected to keep people off the hill of fossils. Though I couldn’t see anything fossilly, it was another pretty trail.

By the time I reached the fifth trail in the Painted Hills, I was hungry. My coffee was long gone, and it was 80 degrees (27 C) and climbing. At that temperature, hikes in the direct sunlight are less pleasant. This trail was as beautiful and interesting as the others. I spotted another trail on a painted hill (You can see it above) from what I assume are the Probably Antelope. Then I returned to the Jeep and made my way directly out.

Seeing the position of shadows in late morning, I concluded that this park must be wonderful at sunset. I’ll try to remember that and make it here some evening.

All my facts in this post came from information signs posted in the park.

My route home would only be a few more hours at this point, and I was eager to get there, see Pedro, and take a shower.

I did make it a priority to stop on the Warm Springs Reservation and buy fry bread for Pedro and me. Um, yum, worth it every time. Before I became active with my tribe, I was scared to leave the highway in a reservation because I just didn’t know what it was. Was I allowed? Would I be unwelcome? Now that I’m educated, I realize reservation towns are just like an American town. The people living there are citizens of their tribe, but other than that there really isn’t a difference for a traveler passing through. DO stop! Buy your gas there, stop at a store and get snacks, maybe some handcrafts. If you find fry bread – you must get some. It’s like a big doughnut (elephant ears, if you know what those are), but you can have them made into a taco, or with chili, or just plain (the best!!), or with honeybutter, or with marionberry jam – whatever you like.

Ok. Now that I’ve made you all hungry, I’m going to leave you and wander into the kitchen….