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Archive for August, 2012

Oregon Adventure Day 4

Wednesday, August 15th, 2012

This was a pretty good day, with less driving! We went back out to the Painted Hills area and drove back to two different short hiking trails. The first was leaf hill which is an area where many botanical fossils have been found. For some reason, I lost the photos that I took there. It was interesting, but not that photogenic. The next area, Painted Cove, was breathtaking. It was an area where you could get up close and personal with a painted hill. Here is Mr C walking on the special walkway.

Here are a couple of other shots.

The lower  rock is really lavender – it is lava rock. Click on this and you will see red, lavender and chartreuse with some shades of blue.

I took this shot with Instagram on my iPhone. I did no fiddling with the color. This is how it looked.

We then went back to the overlook of the famous painted hills. The greens were much more vivid in the morning light. The whole place was a riot of color.

I took a panorama shot with an app I have on my iPhone. Click to see it enlarged.

After lunch, we drove out to the town of Fossil. We were going to go to the fossil beds, but it proved to be a bit more of a drive than we want to take. The landscape ran the gamut of wow to bucolic farm scenes.

This was a view driving back to Mitchell.

Tomorrow, we will pack up and head to Bend for some R & R at the Riverhouse Resort. We were going to go to Joseph, but are going to save that for another trip when we can stay longer.

I think it is cooler here than Portland. We have the windows open, feeling a cool breeze and watching a French film we found in the DVD library here at the cottage. So I shall say adieu! We will be driving back to 98° in Portland on Friday!

Oregon Adventure Day 3

Tuesday, August 14th, 2012

This morning, we left Sisters and after a stop at the Trader Joe’s in Bend, we headed east to Mitchell, Oregon.

We saw more rugged landscape. I had no idea this was out here in eastern Oregon.

Upon arriving in Mitchell, we found the local general store, a somewhat intimidating establishment.

We ate our lunch in a little park near the store and then headed up the hill to find our cottage.

We have a beautiful garden all to ourselves.

We unloaded our stuff and put our food in the fridge and hopped back into the car to drive the Journey Through Time Scenic byway. It is a 70 mile loop around the John Day Fossil Bed area.

The landscape changed as we wound our way up and down with many curves and exciting vistas.

Cathedral rock!

After some rest and wine and a great dinner, we jumped back into the car to see the famous painted hills at sunset. There were several areas of painted hills, but the most famous vista is a drive back in off the main road. You can drive up to a lookout point. It was absolutely awesome.

There was some smoke in the sky from a forest fire and so the sunset was spectacular.

I know I am boring you with all of these photos!!! We are going back tomorrow morning to see them in daylight and to hike further back to see the other side of the vista. There will probably be more photos.

Addendum: I forgot to mention that we stopped at the Condon Paleontology Center. It was a beautiful facility and we learned so much about the fossils and ancient history of this area.

Oregon Adventure, Day 2

Monday, August 13th, 2012

This morning, we headed out to Camp Sherman to find the family. There was the Prius parked at Campsite 15. We hiked in and found them set up in their campsite. Miles an Mia were in their hammocks, reading.

Jack was making coffee and Steph was relaxing, looking beautiful and rested.

There was an interesting decoration on their table.

We decided to take a hike along the river to the Camp Sherman store.

I walked about 11,000 steps today. It was a pretty walk and not difficult – just hot!!

Some of the photos I took along the way:

The Metolius river is lined with lovely little cabins and cottages. We loved this one.

A pretty shot of the river with a cabin in the distance.

We bought lunch food and hiked back and sat by the river while M & M cooled off.

We came home and got cleaned up and rested this afternoon. We met the family at a Mexican restaurant tonight. All in all – a very good day.

Oregon Adventure Day One

Sunday, August 12th, 2012

So, here we are in hot, dry Sisters! We dropped Scooter off at the K-9 Resort this morning and then headed towards Mt. Hood.

Then, on to Rt. 26 headed east to Central Oregon.

We were soon into an area of Oregon we had never seen. The landscape is first High Desert – flat wit sagebrush. We could see Mt. Jefferson off to the South.

Then, the landscape became much more rugged with high mesas and deep canyons and gorges.

You can still see Mt. Jeff in the distance.

Then, suddenly, there is the beautiful Deschutes River. This is a blur because we were whizzing along in the car.

These cliffs above the river show many geological layers.

We made it to Sisters and went on to Camp Sherman, hoping to find Steph, Jack and M & M, but they got in later than we expected we will go to their campsite and find them tomorrow. We had a nice lunch at the Camp Sherman store and checked out the beautiful Metolius.

We checked into our little cottage in Sisters. It has no AC and the temps are in the 90s so we have all the fans going. We drove out to Black Butte Ranch for dinner. It was delicious.

 

Road Trip!

Saturday, August 11th, 2012

Mr C and I are heading out tomorrow to check out some mountains and rivers and fossils and lakes in central and eastern Oregon. I have wifi at most of our stops so I hope to be able to check in most days.

Steph, Jack, Mia and Miles are headed back from California and are camping at Shasta tonight and will be at Camp Sherman tomorrow. Our first stop is Sisters so we hope to spend some time with them at Steph’s favorite place, the Metolius River.

I am excited to see Mia after her two weeks at the young artist’s program in San Francisco. Here is a photo that Jayme took of all my grandchildren together this morning.

Mia has turned into a young woman this summer. It makes me so happy to see the smile on Miles. Paige is keeping an eye on her toy to make sure that he  does not abscond with it!!