Travel – Page 12

February 14, 2021February 13, 2021

Painted Hills Pictures

Painted Hills Overlook features a panoramic view of the hills. The trail is accessible year-round, but can be icy in the winter.

The otherworldly nature of the Painted Hills is why we keep coming back to this unit of the John Day Fossil Beds. The guidebooks suggest spring or fall as good times to visit. This just means that those are the seasons with the most visitors at the monument.

Mitchell, the closest town, is a two hour drive through the Ochoco National Forest. There are three units that make up the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument.

Painted Hills is at the southwest corner of the complex. An hour and a half north is the Clarno Unit or 45 minutes East is the Sheep Rock Unit. These three sites offer a great look at the paleontological riches of Oregon and as you can imagine the drive between sites is rich in geological marvels.

The Clarno Unit offers the oldest exposed layers and fossil encrusted rocks while at the Sheep Rock unit you can tour the Thomas Condon Center and view fragments of ancient animals under glass.

However, the Painted Hills Unit presents a much larger canvas where stratified layers of soil show off eons of earth history in a very colorful manner.

We make seasonal trips to Painted Hills and find that the colored layers are more pronounced in the winter and spring.

In the spring we plan to try hiking the Blue Basin Loop, at the northern edge of the Sheep Rock Unit, and take in a somewhat different ancient landscape.

February 7, 2021February 6, 2021

Back roads and weathered wood

I guess we were feeling restless and in need of a real road trip. Winter snows have yet to arrive so we headed north on Highway 97.

At the Northern end of our loop, I-84 and The Dalles Bridge

The idea was to follow this major arterial to the Columbia River Gorge and then wander backroads south along the east side of the Cascades – the more desolate the better.

The photographic target for this journey … abandoned buildings and weathered wood.

With no set destination our wandering led us to the discovery of the day … an old Catholic Cemetery with headstones dating back to the mid – 1800s.

The settling and re-settling of rural Oregon is most evident along the small state routes. Roads connect names on a map where the main structure of commerce is a grain elevator.

Once you climb out of the gorge there’s an expanse of furrowed fields with sprouts of winter wheat in perfect rows. These rolling hills of grain fields get broken by gashes cut in by seasonal creek beds. The road follows nature’s contours with minimal engineering.

This area offers a beautiful canvas for some wonderful cloud scapes.

There are trip planners on the Internet leading to ghost towns. In Oregon, agriculture and mining are featured as the driving forces in the creation of these markers to progress and shifts in the state’s economy. A large number of these spots are in Central Oregon.

Dufer, 20 minutes south of The Dalles, was once at the heart of an apple growing mecca.

Our research suggested this as a good area for photographic explorations. Aging wooden structures holding granaries and mills, as well as rural schools dot the area.

We toured roads named for mills, markets and local farms, as well as the slightly racist “Japanese Hollow” where we found an abandoned schoolhouse in a cow pasture.

Turning up fifteen mile road, which is more like sixteen miles up OR 197 from it’s junction with I-84, we were treated to postcard views of Mt Hood. The focus of this leg was to locate the old general store in the town of Friend. Unfortunately, it was closed to outsiders. I guess there was no friendliness to be found in Friend.

We climbed up the lower eastern foothills of the Cascades and onto the Warm Springs Reservation. Here we caught more great snow capped images and a well weathered stock corral before dropping back down into the Deschutes River gorge and reconnecting with Highway 97 and the trip home.

Heading west on OR 216 out of Maupin toward Walter’s Corner

January 31, 2021January 31, 2021

Morning at Smith Rock

We arrived before dawn and pretty much had the place to ourselves. Despite the low light conditions, we easily navigated the trails.

Central Oregon winters can deliver deep snow and sub-freezing temps … but there are also periods of nearly spring-like conditions. On one of those snowless days we headed off for Terrabonne and a hike at Smith Rock State Park.

The park and it’s web of trails center around a canyon with shear rock faces lining the north bank of the Crooked River. Most people come here to climb those rocks and on weekends the parking lot is literally filled to capacity.

Arrive on a weekday morning, especially in the winter, and you might have the park to yourself. We’re here because the gnarled juniper trees and rock outcroppings make for interesting landscape photos.

There was no dramatic sunrise. That said, we scouted the area for future shoots. This is a destination (much like Painted Hills) that we will definitely visit again.

However, we chose a more moderate route. By following the south rim of the Crooked River Canyon we were treated to great views, excellent photo ops and an easy hike.

December 13, 2020December 13, 2020

Glad It’s over … nearly

This is the 60th time this year we’ve shared our week.

The blog serves as a reference point in our lives. What we did last week gets translated into words, images, and an occasional video.

Smoke from Oregon’s forest fires inundated the area making it impossible to do anything outside.

As the year comes to a close it would be easy to focus on the dumpster fire that was 2020 … maybe naively think 2021 is going to be any better.

But a blog allows us a look back at directions we took and points we hit.

Last January started with a typical Central Oregon mid-winter thaw. This presented an opportunity to explore where just a few weeks before the roads were snowed in and would be again the following week.

By April we were in the clutches of “first wave” quarantine and social distancing. We discovered that fewer people working meant crowds in the forests and on river banks. Thus we had to look for alternatives.

Time was blocked out visiting via Zoom, experimenting with recipes and creating new rituals. Cocktail hour became a new favorite. We spent time sipping and testing different whiskeys.

As Spring shifted into summer we discovered new spots to spend a day. Explorations of different roads around Summer Lake, Fort Rock and the high desert forested edges occupied our day trips.

We upgraded our camera kit this year, adding a lens sized for wildlife photography.

The summer and fall got filled with days stalking feathered critters in addition to the usual finned variety.

A blog by design is retrospective, focused on what happened.

We actually got in quite a few great adventures while perfecting our social distancing skills. That said it will be nice to see the end of this year.

September 27, 2020September 27, 2020

Seasonal journeys

In this house there is always fruit on the counter and in the fridge. We do play favorites and eat mostly to season. Winter is citrus, berries for Spring, Summer is stone fruit and Fall is all about apples and melons.

I think apples are my favorite for everyday eating. Thus we look forward to the fall and our annual trip to the orchards that line the hills around Hood River, Oregon. We make this pilgrimage pretty much every fall for the last dozen years and we always go to the same spot.

Kiyokawa Family Orchards (yeah, I don’t know how to pronounce it either) is about the only place we ever go. There are lots of different stands in the area, check out the Fruit Loop map and website. This place has a huge variety of apples, pears, and plums.

In the past it was a giant apple tasting. Due to current Covid circumstances, they have altered the buying experience a bit. The slices for tasting aren’t sitting on the bins of fruit. They also stopped individually weighing your purchases. Instead, you move through a well thought out social distancing maze, pick out either a box or bag, pay, then proceed to fill with fruit of your choice.

Winding your way past tubs of fruit, you can pick from all offerings, exiting near where you started, only now you have a box of apples and pears.

The only problem is trying to remember the different varieties and maintaining tasting notes so you can find the ones you like best next year.

– book note –

You should find a copy of Dan Rather’s recent book “What Unites Us”. A timely discussion on America, democracy and the fragile threads holding our nation together. We’ve been working through it a chapter at a time, reading it aloud to each other. Excellent book, sparking energetic discussion.