John Day Fossil Beds National Monument- Sheep Rock and Painted Hills Units

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

We started our day with an osprey flying up and down along the river banks with a fish clenched in its claws. It must have been young, since it couldn't seem to figure out how to land on a branch while holding the fish, so it could eat it. A half dozen aborted attempts later, it finally settled on a branch. We headed out of Big Bend campground and back into the monument.


It was a good decision to wait until the cool of the morning, and an overcast day to do our hiking at John Day. We took the two short hikes at the Foree turnout to view the lime sherbet colored rock formations. Then we drove to the Blue Basin Area, and hiked the 3+ mile Blue Basin Overlook trail. The trail takes you up, up to the ridge along the top of the basin and back down again. The Blue Basin is one of the best fossil gathering areas in the monument, and the trail affords you long distance views of the John Day River valley, the basalt lava layers across the valley, but most spectacularly, the view into the Blue Basin. The Basin changes color according to the light. On our visit with the overcast skies, the eroding cliffs were definitely green and not blue.

Hiking up to look at the Foree Area

Ash layers

Former soil surfaces mark the intervals between ash falls

Hiking up to Blue Basin

Near the top of the Blue Basin hike

Looking down into Blue basin

Trapped by a cow-proof gate

Local resident snakey-type beast

Juniper berries

Fossil wood, maybe?

Grumpy Lizard

Lunch time! We drove to the James Cant Ranch, a restored ranch within the monument that was bought by the Park Service in 1977. We ate lunch, then walked around the grounds where we were encouraged to pick fruit off the orchard trees, it was out of reach or bad, and then toured the house and barns. The family arrived in the valley the beginning of the 20^th century and ranched there until 1977, first raising sheep and then cattle.

Cant Ranch

Sheep barn

Original Cant family cabin

Next we drove over to the Painted Hills Unit. By now it was sunny and hot, and we had already had some good hikes. We drove to the Painted Hills Overlook and trail and hiked to the overlook to view the many colored, striped hills. There were a few short trails farther up the road, but we both agreed at that point we had seen what we came for and were anxious to get on down the road to find a campsite for the night.

Painted Hills

We drove on up into the Ochoco Mountains and began to get some relief from the heat. At the summit was the Ochoco Divide forest service campground, right along our route west, so we planned to stop there. As we got closer we saw that we were in a recent burn zone. The trees were charred and no new vegetation was growing, not even grass. We could smell a slightly singed odor. Hoping that the campground would still be there, we drove on. Turning in we found it open, but trees had been selectively burned. There were healthy Ponderosa Pine next to totally charred, burned to ground stumps of other species. We've seen this in other burn areas. Fire is selective. Some trees seem to have an ability to withstand more fire, and the fire shifts around in strange patterns, sparing some close by areas, but not others.

Ochoco National Forest - camped in July burn

This hemlock burned but barely scorched the ponderosa 4 feet away.

Some of the burned trees had been cut down, and there were a few others campers there, so we decided to stay the night. Our camp host told us the fire was the middle of July. Six weeks later they opened it up again, but were closing it again at the end of the month to finish cutting and cleaning up the burned trees. We stayed to enjoy the coolness and observe the effects of the forest fire.