She said: It is weird to think that a 62 mile day would be considered a “short” day, but it has come to that. Paul was finished riding about noon and we met in Mitchell. After lunch we rode back to the John Day Fossil Bed area. The National Park area is a paleontologists dream. The Visitors Center had examples of fossils that have been found here. After our tour at the center we decided to go to the Blue Basin hiking trail. It was a nice 3 mile hike around, up and over a pretty big hill. Anyone who knows me knows that heights are not my thing, but Paul helped me traverse the paths that went along the edge of the mountainside. It was a nice hike-beautiful scenery-colorful rock cliffs of green and red. Oh yeah-funny story about John Day. He had nothing to do with the exploration of the area, but it seems there are a lot of things named after him. He was on an exploration to the Columbia River in the mid 1800’s-separated from his group with another gentleman. They were captured by Indians, robbed of everything (including their clothes) and left by the mouth of the river where they were rescued. The river previously had an Indian name, but after the incident it was referred to as the John Day. When you name a river it is at the mouth of the river and usually anything within that river area gets the name too. There is a town, river, roads, and the fossil bed area named after him, even though as far as they can tell, he was never within 100 miles of this area. Pretty funny, huh? Off to Sisters tomorrow.
He said: 2 down, 3 to go. Short, strategic day today. Done by lunchtime, and since we hadn’t had any exercise we took a pretty strenuous 3 mile hike. Two 90+ days coming up with a good peak on each one….and then the finale. We are staying in Mitchell, OR-population 108. We are on the Business Loop, and we are regulars at the restaurant…we had lunch and dinner there. The food was good, we had to compete with the flies to eat. It seems the more isolated you are around here, the more everything costs. Competition can be a good thing. Early night and will hit the road again in the morning. 62 miles.
Another beautiful National Park site.
What's up with this? Saw this tree with shoes, boots, sneakers hanging from it-in the midle of nowhere!
From the John Day Fossil Bed Visitors Center-The cathedral
On the Blue Basin trail-the color was more like a minty green.
Heading up.
Taking a break. 1.3 miles done, 1.95 to go.
Still on the way up-yikes!
We were on the edge of the hillside across from where we had been-Paul took this one-I couldn't turn to the side to look without holding on to him. It was beautiful though. Now we just had to get down.
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