I mentioned earlier how I had moved around a lot as a child and later on my own as an adult. Each state that I found myself in came with its own merits and its own demerits. Some states have amazing scenery, but also have horrible weather. Some states come with four seasons while some just stick with the two or three seasons that work for them. I once lived in a beautiful town that had perfect, sunny, 70 degree weather all year round. Beautiful, yet it just didn't suit me. It wasn't until I made it to Oregon that I felt I had found the combination best suited for me. Oregon is the place that I wish I had found sooner.
Oregon has so much to offer anyone willing to take a day and hit the open road. Any one of the directions you take will lead you to any number of Oregon's beaches, forests, rivers, and hiking trails. You will find places that offer camping, swimming, diverse wildlife and wonderful people. Oregon comes with the full four seasons that are noticeably different even though they all bring their fair share of rain and, of course, there are the Seven Wonders of Oregon. Here is a link that will give anyone who is interested in the rest of those Seven Wonders a closer look at some of the sights waiting to be taken in:
https://traveloregon.com/things-to-do/trip-ideas/7-wonders/
Out of the Seven Wonders, we have been to five of them: The Painted Hills (which we are talking about here), Mount Hood, Crater Lake, the Columbia River Gorge, and the Oregon Coast (where parts of the Goonies movie was filmed!). We have not yet been to Smith Rock or the Wallowas, but now I have added incentive to visit if it gives me a chance to take some more photographs for the website. This time around though, I'll keep the focus where I intended it to be, The Painted Hills.
The Painted Hills are located in Mitchell, Oregon which is 218 miles from my current position or 4 hours and 22 minutes driving if you are one of those people who prefer to measure distance in time rather than miles. I may have forgotten to mention that Oregon is beautiful but, many of the places you may want to see aren't really near each other. This works in your favor though because, as the saying goes, getting there is half the fun and the view along the way is just as beautiful as your destination. All along the roads of Oregon you'll see signs inviting you to stop and take a break and to enjoy some spectacular vistas. I highly encourage you to do so. These regular pauses will add a couple additional hours to your journey, but your memory of those views will last so much longer.
Of course we made quite a few stops along the way to take in some of those views. One such stop allowed us to stretch our legs by a lake (I believe it may have been Trillium Lake but I wasn't able to find anything definitive looking back through the pictures of that day). It's a beautiful and prominent spot along the way and we could have happily spent the day there if we didn't already have an ultimate destination in mind. There weren't many people there, and those who were looked to be getting set up for camping or BBQs or both. It was a great day for it.
We hung around in a tree for a bit, skipped some rocks, and then had to get back on the road to finish what we came out there to do.
Our visit to the Painted Hills took place in May of 2015. We were armed only with the cameras on our cellphones and a couple bottles of water for the road. The weather had just started to warm up and the morning started off as mostly cloudy. The clouds worked in our favor for a couple of reasons; the first reason being that I am a pasty man and prone to developing a sunburn anytime I am exposed to anything brighter than a Christmas tree light and the second being that the interplay of shadow and light created magic when touched to the colors of the hills.
The Painted Hills are the product of thousands of years of geological activity. The layered colors in the landscape are a throwback to a time when the entire area had a tropical climate. The pigmentation is caused by factors ranging from volcanic ash to vegitative matter that existed and then decayed eons ago. The layers also serve as a road map showing how the climate changed as it cooled over time.
It's all very cool. It's also very contained. A visitor may feel like they've seen all there is to see in the first hour or so of their arrival, but there is much more to see beyond the initial attraction. The Painted Hills also have several branching trails to hike through. These trails contain a lot of information about the area and what happened in the eons ago that caused the landscape to develop the way that it has. The landscape is also part of the larger John Day Fossil Beds so, naturally the area contains a large amount of fossils. We weren't fortunate to stumble across any fossils on our walkthrough, but we were lucky enough to stumble across this:
This was a great cow. I am not sure who it belonged to or what it was doing out there, but I choose to believe it, like us, was just hanging around outdoors on a beautiful day learning a thing or two about geography and fossil beds. I'd also like to believe that I'll head back out to the Painted Hills again this year once the weather turns warmer. I will try to plan the day so that I can be there in the late afternoon when the sun is going down and the colors are extra vibrant. Next time I will go with a better camera that will actually do justice to the landscape. I wonder if that cow is still wandering around out there? If I see it, I will let you know.
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