Silly us!!!

June 12  2021

So, for todays little outing we went up to a place called Painted Hills Unit which is part of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. I haven’t looked him up but there are lots of things around here named John Day, a town, river, highway and a National Monument to name a few.

Once we entered the Painted Hills area, we drove to the end and started exploring as we returned. We did several short 1/4 mile walks.

Silly us we should have done this first.

As the day started heating up we made it back to the longest and hardest hike in the Unit, it was billed as a 3/4 mile, one way, well, it wasn’t much longer than that – but that 3/4 mile was all up hill, now this was not like when we were in the cool tree covered mountains the other day, no, we’re in a hot, dry, treeless landscape, bright sunshine, nothing but a few high thin clouds and around 84 degrees and silly us saved the hardest hike for last. We made it to the top and were rewarded with some fantastic views of the Painted Hills. We only drank 1 of the 2 bottles of water we took with us but the last few sips were mighty warm.

The End