The Painted Hills and the John Day Fossil Beds
From Portland, the Painted Hills are just far enough out of the way to feel inconvenient, but just close enough to make for a perfect weekend trip. It's also one of the 7 Wonders of Oregon. We had headed down to see them a few years ago, and decided it had been too long. A spring trip was in order, and we had a perfect window of warm weather to head south.
The John Day Fossil Bed National Monument consists of three separate units in a slightly spread out area of eastern-central Oregon: The Painted Hills, Sheep Rock, and the Clarno units. We skipped Clarno on this trip (we only had two full days, after all), but headed east out of Portland along the Columbia River Gorge to check out the Sheep Rock unit first.
The drive east is beautiful - you have the views of the Gorge to the north until you turn towards the desert. We passed through fields of windmills and then hugged the John Day River all the way down to the national monument. On the way in from this direction, you’ll pass Cathedral Rock (worth stopping for some pictures!) and a few other beautifully colored monoliths along the side of the road. We arrived at the Thomas Condon Paleontology Center and checked out the map to find the names of everything we had just driven past.
The Paleontology Center is actually an active research facility, so aside from the cool (and very informative) museum area which includes more fossils than you can shake a stick at, you can also hang out and watch the scientists doing their geology thing. We spent quite a bit of time wandering the museum, and then headed across the street to the Cant Ranch (where lots of lame dad jokes were told with the Cant’s name). There’s a short trail that leads to a viewpoint of Sheep Rock which is worth taking. The ranch was closed while we were there, but we wandered the grounds and had lunch, and even found a fossil of our own - there was a full deer skeleton behind some bushes on the path that had clearly been there for some time.
From Sheep Rock, we headed down the Journey Through Time Scenic Byway for the hour drive to the Painted Hills. On the way we saw a herd of antelope and tons of deer! During the spring months, the Painted Hills is not a very popular destination, so when we arrived at the monument a couple hours before sundown, there were just a few cars there ahead of us. We drove to the very end of the road in the park and worked backwards, starting at Red Hill and checking out all the short trails on the way back to the main attraction. We planned to do the Carroll Rim Trail in time to catch the sunset - the way the shadows land over the Painted Hills is just too much. I’d been dreaming about it since I’d seen it the first time!
The light show didn’t disappoint, and about an hour before sunset we started up the short trail. Starting from the parking area at the top of the Hills, the trail climbs up 400 feet in about ¾ of a mile to an overlook of the valley. It’s really quite stunning! They’d put in benches since we had last been there, so we dumped our bags and watched the sun go down, soaking in as much of the view and warm weather as we could before making the short trek back down.
Sadly, camping inside the national monument is not allowed, but there are quite a few campgrounds nearby that provide easy accommodations if you’re inclined to stay. We drove through a farm to get to our camp spot, and baby cows ran curiously up to the car and then darted away wildly over and over again, and we ended up spending the rest of our daylight just watching the calves being silly. We set up camp in the dark, spent way too long playing with light with my camera, and went to sleep warm and exhausted. Having camped by a river, however, we woke up to a frozen solid tent and turning on the car to check the temperature, discovered it had dropped significantly overnight - it was 12 degrees! We were treated to an amazing sunrise over the foggy river, and then had the Painted Hills completely to ourselves for a few hours on the way out.
While the units of the monument are a bit too far from each other to do in one day, the whole area is worth taking a weekend trip for, and it’s absolutely fascinating! The amount that Oregon has changed over millions of years is pretty crazy, and it’s really interesting to read about what the landscape and wildlife used to be like based on all the fossils they’ve found. While I’m not usually one for museums (how could you not be outside?!), I highly recommend the Paleontology Museum if you have any interest in Oregon natural history (or geology, or archaeology…). And really, the Painted Hills are worth the drive by themselves!