Monday - We had a change in plans today. David called me this morning about 7:30 from the hospital. Mazie had awakened aboout 2:30 a.m. with chest pains and her blood pressure was high (it is normally very low), so he took her to the hospital, which is only about 2 miles away. The doctor ran a bunch of tests, and then ran them again, but he didn't find any problem so she was discharged about 9:30 a.m. We stopped by the hospital after breakfast but didn't see their car so we called and found out they were back at the campground. She has self-diagnosed her problem -- she thinks it is the side effect from the allergy pills she has been taking here in Oregon. They had decided to extend their stay here in Prineville for another day and then decide whether to continue on with us or head to Arizona. So we all extended our stay to make sure she was all right. The current decision is that they will continue traveling with us as we head north tomorrow.
We had gone to breakfast with the Brundiges, and next to the restaurant was a cute "jungle gym" made out of iron, we think. Also next to it was a very nice flower stand, that would work for us with our rabbits at home.
After we visited with the Johnsons, Marilyn and I drove into town to a thrift store I had wanted to stop at. Meanwhile, Joe did some maintenance to get ready to move tomorrow: washing windows (ours and the Brundiges), dumping our holding tanks, and putting some grease on our air conditioner which is making an awful noise -- some of the time.
Then, since everything had settled down, we decided to take a drive to Painted Hills Unit of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument in the Ochoco National Forest. This forest also has several bands of wild horses, so we really hoped to happen onto some of them, but we figured out later that we were not in the right part of the forest. On the way, just out of town about 5 miles, we came upon the Ochoco Reservoir, which was beautiful and a total surprise to us.
We drove through several miles of fire damage from a forest fire in 2000. It takes so long for the forests to rebuild after the fires, as we well know in Arizona.
On our way back later on, on another part of our drive (the dirt road part), we did see some new growth that had protective wire around the young trees, so obviously something is being done to replenish the forests.
This part of the forest looked very healthy.
Back to the Painted Hills part of our drive, as we turned onto the road to this monument,
we came upon this animal crossing sign. I asked Joe what kind of critter this was! We are still out looking for her.
This was our first glimpse of the Painted Hills, and it was a WOW!
These hills were very colorful, and I was told by someone local that they look different every time he goes. I of course took several pictures, so here are a few.
We expected to be by ourselves back here, but the parking lots were pretty busy and we even met several motorhomes and campers on the road. We have seen UPS drivers in out-of-the-way places before, but we even saw one of those out here.
We hiked the short Painted Cove Trail, and were surprised to see a lake off in the distance (on private property).
A close-up of the actual soil on the hill.
In addition to the reds, there were even some lavender hills along here. I managed to "collect" a couple of rocks along this trail.
I wanted one of these rocks but didn't think I could dig it out, and I knew it wouldn't fit in my pocket.
Driving down another road, we found a footbridge to another pretty hill.
This was all pretty amazing. When we got back to the highway, we went on to the little town of Mitchell, which seemed more like a ghost town than anything else. We drove the "business district," but there sure wasn't much going on there. So we turned around and found us a Forest Road to drive to see if we could scare up some wildlife. We spotted a deer not too far in, hidden behind a tree. In the shade, I had a hard time finding it with the camera, and it stood perfectly still the 2-3 minutes I tried to get a picture. Finally, Joe backed up a few feet to give me a better angle. The deer still hadn't moved. I told Joe I thought it was fake. He said he had never thought of that, but maybe so. He could imagine the forest ranger sitting back laughing at us taking pictures of a fake deer. Then he thought he saw the tail move, but as he started to say that sometimes they put moving parts on fake animals, the deer spooked and shot off into the forest. I'm sure I jumped. I barely got a second picture of it as it scampered off into the trees. But it sure knew how to be a still life! The stripes from the shadows made it look like it had tiger stripes.
I had to zoom it in a lot but you can barely see his white rear as he heads into the trees.
We saw another deer later cross the road in front of us a little ways, and when we found that one in the trees, there was another one with it. I didn't get a picture of those two. But eventually we did spot one more deer, just after Joe took the picture of the little fence around the pine tree. So that made our hour drive on the dirt road worthwhile -- 4 deer.
Although we never got to see any wild horses, we enjoyed seeing the deer. Other wildlife we spotted today were a bunch of geese in the marshland by the reservoir, and a bluejay on a picnic table at the rest stop.
Dave and Mazie planned on an early night, so we finished the evening with cards with the Brundiges. Hopefully, everyone will have a good night and we will move on tomorrow.
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