Day Three: Wandering the Back Roads, John Day Fossil Beds

"It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity."

Twilight Zone Opening Monologue, Season 1

Day Three Itinerary:

• Explore Baker City (and the "timeless" search for a good cup of coffee)
• Wander the back roads
• Go Rockhounding along the way
• Have a late lunch at the Dayville Cafe 
• Hike in the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument (Vast and Timeless)

Early Sunday Morning, Baker City was still asleep.

All around town there is evidence of restoration, and of civic pride

Historic buildings of brick or local stone.

The Lone Pine Cafe. If only we had been hungry! We watched the waitress bring tremendous

 breakfasts to the sidewalk tables outside our window. But the coffee was very good.

With a borrowed copy of Rockhounding Oregon, we set out to find one of the sites along the Old West Scenic Bikeway, CR20.
We settled on investigating Vinegar Creek, the second stop listed in the guide.
We tromped across the grass, hoping the rattlesnakes were all asleep!

The creek had some interesting rocks, and we played for a few minutes with my Dad's old rock picks. It would have been easy to spend a lot of time looking for "just one more", a common theme in Twilight Zone stories.

Dayville is next to the turn-off for the John Day Fossil Beds, and is home to the Dayville Cafe, well reviewed for its burgers, breakfasts and pies.

We were not disappointed!
They are closed Mon-Tues, so this was our only chance.
I don't think we were hungry again for about 24 hours.

We checked in to our quaint and cozy room at the Fish House Inn and drove to the Sheep Rock Unit of the John Day Fossil Beds.

What these pictures can't tell you is how utterly noiseless it was, all sounds hushed by the peaks.

We were there just before sundown, and the park was empty. 

Alone in a silent, lunar landscape,

Surrounded by this amazing strata of ancient geologic history, layers of sediment and ash.

(keep scrolling for day four)