John Day Fossil Beds and Kam Wah Chung Museum

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

Ritter Hot Springs

Our first day trip out of John Day was to Ritter Hot Springs. The drive there was amazing--open range fields as far as the eye could see, and driving through towns with one gas station and a post office.

It made us giddy driving through this area, I wanted to see a movie view of us from the air--the lone truck driving down the road.

 

When we got to the hot springs, our 11-year-old did not want to get out of the car. It looked too much like a shack, and she uttered something along the lines of "Dad, seriously. . . no. What, is there a water pipe and a kiddie pool out back?" 

We all thought about the same thing, but put on brave faces. (There have been a lot of times on this trip where we've said, "Come on, this will be fun!" when we really don't have a clue what we're getting ourselves into.)

This is the best angle of the hot springs hotel. We didn't stay there overnight, but it did look like they had a guest or two. 

To say that this place was laid back is an understatement. There was a jar to put your money in to pay, and the hostess (?) was sitting outside on a picnic table writing a letter. (It took a while for that to sink in--there were no cell or internet signals there, so really, letter writing was the only long-range communication option, other than a land line.) If you wanted treats, it was also on the honor system to put your money in the jar. 

There were four hot spring options here. The first was a regular swimming pool that had a hose from the hot spring filling it up. It was nice and warm, and had great canyon views. We had to ignore the algae on the bottom of the pool, but enjoyed having the place to ourselves.

There was also a hot tub, four scary individual (cinder block enclosures) hot tub rooms, and an outdoor shower. The outdoor shower was by far our favorite place. It looked rather creepy at first--like someone ripped out a shower from a mobile home and plonked it down by the river. You had to turn a pipe wrench to get the water flowing, but then it was a strong stream of hot spring water rushing over you as you looked out over the river. I'm glad we had the place to ourselves, as we really enjoyed hogging this up, and would have been sad to have to take more turns.

The outdoor shower is there at the end of the bridge on the right.

As we were showering and having cookies under a big leafy tree, one of the hotel guests pulled the mattress out of her room and flopped it on the wrap-around porch, and took a nap outside with her dog under an old quilt. Perfect day material, right?

John Day

Heading out from Bend we took Hwy 26 east. This was the first time the now-frequently used term 'butt-clenching' (and its variations) were introduced into our family vocabulary. As in, we're cruising happily along out of Bend, then the highway takes a sharp left, and then, oh, we're going straight down another hairpin into Prineville, aren't we?!? Then, safely at the bottom, "Well, that was a butt-clencher, wasn't it everyone?" 

Luckily from there on out the road meandered peacefully through some farms and we were all able to relax and enjoy the drive. 

 As we got closer to the John Day Fossil Beds national monument we wound through the canyons, in awe of the scenery. 

The Sheep Rock.

In these more remote areas it can be a bit tricky to find a good place to camp for the night. Sometimes things are advertised as RV parks, but they are really mobile home parks with mostly full-time residents and tricky parking and navigating. We could technically head to a true campground, too, but in unknown areas we're still not in the 'zone' to drive into an area that we're not sure we can get out of. (We do have roadside assistance, do you think they'd come if we accidentally put our RV in a tent spot and can't get it out?)

We found the John Day fairgrounds (and RV park!), which turned out to be a great place to stay. We were within walking distance of downtown, and the only stoplight in the whole county. (They have a bench there on the corner, so you can do a bit of car watching on a slow evening.) We had deer walk through in the evenings, and the only radio station in the area was on the corner. (The programming kept us on our toes, you start the morning with old-school country, progressing into more pop-ish country, then disco/jazz in the evening.) 

We also had our first laundromat experience, which was fun to do as a team.

She's way cuter than Rachel Green, and way more helpful. =)