OREGON
Oregon Road Trip - Day 8
There’s a cafe in Mitchell called Bridge Creek Cafe. Accordingly, we walked across a bridge that went over a creek to get to it. It’s a small operation. I got eggs and bacon and coffee and was a happy camper.
There was a pamphlet in our room talking about the scenic drive for John Day Fossil Bed National Monument. We had already done a portion of it the day before on our way to Mitchell. Today, I decided we should go further east and check out Sheep Rock Unit before heading to Painted Hills and then onward to Bend.
It had snowed a few inches overnight so I was nervous about getting to Painted Hills and having it just be white. But the weather ended up being highly variable on the drive, and it was not a problem in the end.
The first stop is Sheep Rock. It’s about an hour from Mitchell. There are a few pullouts to view it, and you can see it clearly from the Thomas Condon Paleontology Center.
The paleontology center was also awesome! We spent at least thirty minutes (we didn’t want to spend too much time so we rushed a bit) looking at fossils and reading about the history of the area. It’s so interesting. Rhinos used to live in Eastern Oregon!
The next step was Blue Basin. It was mentioned in the pamphlet I was reading in the hotel. When we got there though, it required a medium length hike. It was still raining and snowing intermittently so we decided to skip it ultimately.
Sidenote but I had barely any reception for this entire trek. Particularly in Mitchell I was dead in the water. It made looking up stuff ahead of time impossible. Also we were keeping my friend in Bend updated piecemeal as I got bars.
The final stop in Sheep Unit was Cathedral Rock. I wish this had better pull offs to view because my boyfriend and I got our shoes incredibly muddy taking pictures.
Then we turned around and drove back to Mitchell. There we had lunch at Tigertown Brewing. This time I got the chicken fingers and still thought the food was really good. I’m very impressed with this spot, they’re very versatile.
From Mitchell it’s only 20 or 30 minutes to Painted Hills. There’s not much to Painted Hills, maybe tops 3 hikes. And the classic pictures you’ll see are from the boardwalk which is probably a quarter of a mile tops.
The first trail we did is the Overlook trail. This goes uphill a bit and was a little muddy. We could see a storm rolling towards us.
This is from the Painted Cove Trail which has the boardwalk I mentioned. I liked this viewpoint because there’s a super blue lake in the distance that contrasts nicely.
So while Painted Hills is pretty small, we still thought it was really cool.
To get to Bend from there it was only an hour and a half and pretty carefree. I was worried about the mountain roads being snowy or icy but it was clear and a total breeze. We arrived in Bend in time to meet up with my friend, shower, and head out to dinner.
We decided to go to Monkless Belgian Ales. We got a 13 flight of beer to taste every beer on the menu. We also tried the fried oysters and they were incredible.
I appreciate the waitstaff for being such good sports here!
We headed back to my friend’s place to drink another few beers from Astoria and finish catching up.