6.5 miles of hiking • 0' elevation gain • 2 nights
This was a car camping trip, but nonetheless, it was a ton of fun and we went to all three units at the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument.
Day 1: Drive Portland to Mitchell, then to Barnhouse Campground about 20 miles east of Mitchell. On the way to the campground, we saw two elk off in the forest. That was pretty cool! We spent the night at this awesome campsite at Barnhouse Campground and almost had the whole places to ourselves. There was plenty of space for us to spread out our tents, and I pitched my hammock with ease. The ladies in my meetup group eat a lot better than I do when car camping. We were greeted by the early arriving vehicle who had prepared a tray of meats, cheeses, olives and other fancy snacks, along with bread and fixings to make sandwiches, a few salads, gin martinis and red wine to wash it all down with. For dessert we had campfire roasted apples with cinnamon and maple syrup. Seriously a delicious evening! I slept really well in the hammock. It was my second night sleeping in the new Hennessy Hyperlite Hammock and I'm still getting it dialed in. I really need to change the suspension out on it soon. It takes me too long to set up.
Day 2: Painted Hills Unit, Sheep Rock Unit and camping at Service Creek. This day kicked my butt. We started out with the Painted Hills Unit and walked all of the trails in the area. They do a really good job of keeping people off the fragile areas and the trails for the most part are super short. The longest one in the Painted Hills Unit is 1.5 miles with maybe a 500' elevation gain...but I am not sure.
After the Painted Hills Unit, we stopped in Mitchell to get gas and get our lunches ready for the drive to the Sheep Rock Unit. By this time, I was starting to lose energy. We stopped at the visitor center and looked at the cool exhibit about the history of the area. I wish we had more time to take it all in. But we were starting to get short on time and still had a few places to get to before finding a place to camp. We went to the Blue Basin trailhead and I knew I had hit my wall. It was a 3 mile RT hike and even though it had minimal elevation gain, I was wiped from having just come off my night shifts so I opted to sleep in the car instead. I got a nice nap in and was refreshed and ready to go when everyone returned to the car an hour later. We stopped at the last trail before heading towards Fossil to find a campsite for the night.
We ended up at Service Creek, right on the John Day River. It was a nice spot but severely lacking in trees for me to hang. There was one set but they were too close together for me to get a good hang so I decided to go to ground and sleep in my bivy sack. We had so much food left over from the night before that we had another potluck dinner, with the addition of salad and more alcoholic beverages while sitting by the fire. Our night was finished off with s'mores and good conversation before retiring to our respective sleeping areas.
I woke up around Midnight to the sound of rain, but it wasn't coming down too hard so I continued sleeping until I was awoken again a few hours later with more rain, but again, it wasn't much so I went back to sleep. At one point, I got really hot in the bivy and had to shed a few layers of clothing and open it up to get some air.
Day 3: Clarno Unit to Shaniko to Maupin to The Dalles to Horsethief Butte to Portland. We had a leisurely breakfast this morning before heading towards Fossil and the Clarno Unit. We detoured to Fossil and did a drive thru...not a whole lot going on there. For a Monday morning, I expected there to be more going on. We continued to the Clarno Unit where we took the three trails there. One trail had some fossils you were supposed to see but to be honest, all the rocks looked like rocks to me. I never did find the leaf fossil I was supposed to!
After our time at Clarno Unit, we set off for home with a few stops along the way. We drove through Shaniko, which is supposed to be a ghost town but it seemed like more of a tourist trap than anything. We took the "scenic" route to Maupin and then continued up to The Dalles, where we crossed over the Columbia River and stopped at Horsethief Butte for some scrambling and bouldering. We also went to the state park down the road from it to look at the petroglyph exhibit. Those were pretty cool. By this time, we were all hungry for an early dinner and stopped in Stevenson for dinner before heading home and our separate ways.
I want to go back. Two nights and days is NOT enough to really give this area the time it deserves. I also want to see the Painted Hills at sunset. Hope to get back later this summer.
