OREGON VACATION DAY 4

What a difference a day makes! We got up and the sun was shining--perfect day to take a long walk. We had decided to go to Smith Rock State Park for a visit if the weather cooperated. After a light breakfast in our room, we packed a picnic lunch and headed for the park.

We arrived at the park around 8 AM and there were only two cars there. Unfortunately, the park is not manned and there were no trail maps to guide us for our walk. There were about 4 or five trails so we chose 3 that would form a loop which would bring us back to our car. The overall length of the trails were about 4 miles, but, when by the time we got around back we probably had walked 5 miles.

We took a trail to the river which was in a valley and began our walk. At places the trail was about a foot wide and wrapped around some high, steep cliffs. One misstep and you could fall hundreds of feet. There were some steps in some places, but they were not in the best of shape as seen in this picture.

We followed the river trail for at least 2 miles. After about 1 1/4 miles, the trail had been washed out and we had to either climb some rocks or go back. I climbed over the rocks without too much problems and asked Linda if she wanted to try. She climbed the rocks without too much trouble. Unfortunately, on the other side of the rocks was a lot of loose shale type rocks and a small path about 1 foot wide.

We continued on for another 1/2 mile and had to climb a rather steep small trail up the side of the mountain. Some places the trail was just wide enough to walk--one foot in front of the other and not side by side. Linda said that it was best just to watch your feet and not look up or down. We made it all the way around in a little over 4 hours. After the walk, we were reading an article that said Smith Rock was about 3200 feet high. We had walked over that route. and realized why we were so tired at the end of the walk.

One of the articles we read said that this park was a favorite place for rock climbers. When we were going down the river, we did see one climber on a rock wall that was not too high. After we got back we saw rock climbers on the higher walls. If you look closely, you can see the climbers on the wall in the picture to the right. Blow the picture up to full screen and you can see them better. We drove to another section of the park to eat our lunch and there were climbers on the rocks at the end of the park also.

After lunch we drove to John Day Fossil beds. there are different sections of the park to visit. The first section we were going to visit was some fossil beds which covered many miles. We drove through part of the area and the scenery was great, but we did not see any fossils. We were driving down on mountain to get to the other part of the fossil beds and thought we saw a lake which was not on the map. When we got to the bottom of the mountain, we discovered that it was not a lake, but a river which had overflowed its banks and the road was covered with water. There was a lady near a house and she came over to talk to us. She said that the building was a museum she had opened. A friend had called her and told her she needed to come to the museum because it was flooded. We talked for awhile and found out she lived in the same resort that we were in.

There was no other way to get across the river without making about a 100 mile loop so we turned around and drove about 60 miles back to Eagle Crest. If we have time, we may take an alternate route and visit the rest of the fossil beds.

We are back at the condo very sore, but happy for how the day turned out. We stopped on the way back and bought a pizza for dinner. Plans for tomorrow will be a little dependent on the weather. We do plan on going to Bend, Oregon. I think there are about 7 small breweries in the town and we plan on taking a tour of a one of them.