Then there is the Gorge

The final dawdle - before getting that horse heading to the barn feeling - was a visit to some of the water falls on the scenic Columbia River Gorge.  We headed up to the Gorge along highway 197 and had a 10+ volcano moment.   there is a place near where 197 takes off from 97 where you can see at least 10 volcanic mountains from one place.  Try to drive this highway on a clear day!  It was amazing and would have taken an amazing camera to try to picture it.  We will settle for a picture of Mt. Hood taken a little further north. 

The Oregon side  of the Columbia River Gorge has this amazing highway built in the 1930's to attact tourists to the area.  The old highway parallels the interstate, is slower,charming, cool and shady.

We took a hike up above one of the roadside falls to another little falls.  The second falls changes its name as you go up the trail.  At the bottom of the trail it is called upper horsetail falls.  About half way up it becomes ponytail falls.

Along the trail we enjoyed several varieties of small wildflowers and ferns. 

At the falls we found that we could walk behind the falls.  They were not like a curtain of water, but still it is super cool to walk on the back side of a water fall.

We stopped further on the road at LaTourelle Falls.  They come out of the top of these wonderful columnar basalt cliffs.  The top edge is very square.

The trail beyond the falls takes you closer to the bridge.  It is a concrete bridge which impressed David with it's beauty and engineering.  Concrete apparently is strong in compression, but not so strong in tension, thus the bridge supports had to be designed to put the parts in compression.

 Our final stop along the route was a view point called Crown Vista, which has great views both up and down stream on the River.  The river itself was somewhat swollen, like many American Rivers this year, but was probably not technically in flood stage.  It is pretty hard to have a flood plain with these basalt cliffs as it's boundary unlike the Missouri, which is ten miles wide in the Omaha area.


 

Better than the pictures

The second unit of the John Day Fossil Beds is called the Painted Hills Unit.  I have seen photographs and paintings of this area before.  It is better than the pictures. 

One short trail takes you an a board walk around one of the colorful mounds.





 They ask people to stay off of the mounds.  Up close they look like this and do seem that they would crumble if walked on.


 The colors come from different minerals in the soil.  Some formations of this type have a lot of clay in them and are used for commercial applications for things like kitty litter.

 

There was a great overview spot where the light changed several times as clouds moved through.  It was stunningly beautiful.  

Shortly after this last picture was taken, we picked up a guy who was having car trouble and took him to the next town 60 or so miles away.  It must have been good karma, given that our tire didn't go flat until after we had dropped him off and gone on to the next town, found a motel and eaten dinner.  No we don't normally do that, but you can't leave someone with gray hair on the roadside 60 miles from civilization.  He turned out to be a retired Forest Service Biologist, who pays for his travels by selling his photographs.  None of these pictures are his.  :-)

John Day Fossil Beds

This little spot in the center or Oregon has had an interesting geology and is known for it's fossils. Coming in from the east the first of three areas we came to was the Sheep Rock Unit.  It is named for this rock formation.

You enter the area through the canyon you can kind of see in this picture if you follow the roadway to sheep rock in the background.

I suppose if you know someone who has private land in the area, you could see fossils in situ,  At the National Monument, you see them in a museum and some fake ones along the trail. 

 
We didn't make it to Leaf Hill in the Painted Hills Unit of John Day, but we saw many fossils in the museum that represented plants that we are even familiar with like beeches, maples and oaks.

  It is tempting to bring home a rock from the Blue Basin where we walked in a short trail to see this interesting geology.  The pictures don't show quite how blue it is - it is a pale swimming pool aqua.

 The picture on the right shows one of those fake fossils, and possibly shows excavation sites in the Blue Basin.

Cathedral Rock (below)  is a formation that dropped from a higher elevation and is unique in the area.  I'm going to have to read more about this one.

 The surrounding hills show many layers of lava flows.  This view of Sheep Rock (on the right of the picture) shows those many lava flows and some of the same formation as the Blue Basin on the side of Sheep Rock.

More Dawdling

Instead of speeding along at 65 miles per hour through Oregon we left the freeway and followed a slower road.
Before I inspire you with the beauty of the journey, I should mention that many of the small communities shown on a map do not have gas stations.  At one point there was a sign that said no fuel for  80 miles.  I think it had been about 40 since we had last seen a gas station.  So if you go, stop and get gas when you see it.  We were fine, but we like to drive from the top of the tank when we are traveling.  I should also mention that we were decidedly blessed.  We got up the next morning after our drive in the middle of the "service free zone" and found we had a flat tire in the motel parking lot - 1/2 mile from Les Schwab.  It could have happened out and about miles from any service.  We often seem to have tire adventures when on vacations.

Horses in a roadside meadow of irises

wild irises in meadows and pastureland alongside swollen streams and creeks and rivers

Larches intermingled with the pine forests,  Larches are a deciduous conifer, whose needles turn gold and fall in the autumn.

The forest trees are more spread out than our dense forests west of the Cascade Range. 

 

Big mountain views in relatively narrow valleys.  This is the Strawberry Mountains.

Just a sample of one of the many wild flowers

Then there was being behind a cattle drive for a mile or so.

 

Out and About

We made an unexpected trip to Utah for a funeral.  A sad and a happy occasion, an opportunity to express love and remember a dear soul.  On the way home we decided that we needed to take a couple more days.  We realized that anything resembling "time off" was going to be hard to come by this year so we dawdled on the way home.  It was a beautiful dawdle.

Our first dawdling stop was Shoshone Falls in Idaho.  We had stopped there for the first time about a year ago and were chagrined that we had never stopped here before.   The top two pictures are from this year, showing the snow melt of a record year finding its way downstream along the Snake River.  This is one of the stops for the same water that flooded the Hancock cabin.
This picture was from mid-July in 2010, Quite a difference.  Last year there were kayaks down below the falls.  This year you couldn't see the bottom of the falls for the mist.  Last year many rocks were bare; this year water covered the extent of the roaring falls.