Day Seven: The Boise / Oregon Ghost Town Tour...

Finally, here we are on Day Seven - the final day of the tour! This is the day we travelled home, but FIRST there was a little more adventure to be had!

One of the highlights of the eastern Oregon high desert country is the John Day Fossil Beds. The entire area covers 14,000 acres, but there are four primary areas you can stop at and explore. On this day, we stopped at two of them. The first stop was was at the Clarno Palisades, which is about 20 miles west of the town of Fossil. You drive a VERY windy road to get here!

But there's some fun hiking in and around the area. And as you can see from the photos, we had a beautiful, HOT day to enjoy the trails. Here are a couple of photos from our hike....

and a close up of the rocks...

After our hike, we drove about two hours south to the town of Mitchell, Oregon where we stopped for a treat.

Now, Mitchell is a little tiny town in the middle of the desert with a population of less than 200. But for a tiny town, we had a lot of fun.

We pulled over at the local (and only) grocery store.

Note the wording across the front of the store...

"Antiques and Needful Things..." Needful things? Isn't that a Stephen King book? Yes, indeed. I this this is the first time I've seen that phrase used outside of fiction. Perhaps it's a generational thing.

Anyway, inside we found a delightful selection of ice cream to cool off with. My son, Nathan, decided to try something a bit different...

I have no idea what flavor that is....

But this is my kid - he loves to try different things. Just the other night, we went out and he had tarter sauce for the first time. He's like, "I've never had tarter sauce - I'll try it."

What a great kid, you never have to ask him to try something new. He's always up for a new taste and new experience!

Then we stumbled across this old relic of technology. Nathan tried to figure out how to use it...

"Papa, what's this?"

"It's a phone booth."

"What's a phone booth?"

"It's a public telephone."

"Why do people need these when we have cell phones?"

"Well, son, there was a time when there weren't cell phones."

"Really?"

Pretty soon he'll be asking me what a Compact Disc is and why people ever owned them.

So we headed out of Mitchell, and on to our next stop, The Painted Hills. This is a really beautiful area of the John Day Fossil beds just a few miles west of Mitchell. If you're EVER in this area, it is definitely worth the stop. I feared I might be disappointed - I mean, how "painted" could the painted hills really be?

Well, pretty painted!

It was a very colorful hike through the hills...

It was a lovely, memorable day. A nice way to finish the tour. A few hours later, we were home, and had to return our Ford Explorer "rental car." Leaving that and switching back to our old Honda Civic was a bit like seeing our ride turn back into a pumpkin. You really get used to being in that big ol' thing.

I hope you've enjoyed the tour. I enjoyed sharing the pictures.

Next time I'll give you a little preview of the results from our church location photoshoot - and a glipse at the new CD cover.

Chow for Now,

David Nevue
http://www.davidnevue.com/