Our last day in John Day we spent exploring the fossil beds. We passed through the town of Dayville, which was good for photo ops with their western store front facades.
Surprisingly, the teenager wasn't into hamming it up for us here.
The painted hills and the Sheep Rock formation are so impressive.
They have a great museum, which we had mostly to ourselves on this hot day. Our littlest naturalist checked out each fossil sample in the many displays, and we all learned a lot about the geology of the area.
Cathedral Rock
Later that afternoon we went to the Kam Wah Chung Museum in John Day, starting out in the visitor center to learn about the Chinese and immigrant worker experience in the area, which peaked during the gold rush era. The store was owned by a resourceful pair, and remained closed from their death and remained untouched for three decades. It was an amazing time capsule of their life and the experiences of immigrants. The kids saw the bullet holes in the door (and currently no minorities in what we'd guess to be a two-hour radius), a stark lesson in racism and its effects. The museum and tour are well done, but we did have a good family talk later on about a few of the comments made by the tour guide. She emphasized that the two men were accepted by the white community, and were the only two Asians buried in the town cemetery. Our family's discussion centered on how accepting the town doctor and business man, but pushing everyone else out of town, isn't really all that accepting at all. What do you think?
Kam Wah Chung Museum
www.oregonstateparks.org/index.cfm?do=parkPage.dsp_parkPage&parkId=5
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