Painted Hills - One of the 7 Natural wonders of Oregon

 After all 2020 pandemonium,  the word travelling wasn't as exciting as before but was filled with fear of covid. With the mind oscillating between "lets go out" and  "no, what if's..." we finally decided to go for 2 day trip. The fact that we were vaccinated and cases were decreasing was a ray of hope!.

Painted Hills was one of the place in our bucket list which is 350 miles from Redmond.  Below is the itinerary:

Day 1:  Home to Smith Rock State Park, Sparks Lake and then to Hotel in Prinevelle

Day 2: John Day Fossil Beds National Monument (Painted Hills, Sheep Rock Unit & Clarno Unit)

Both these places are natural wonders and were formed million years ago as a result of volcanic eruption and lava flow which got hardened eventually!!.

The journey started at 7 am from Redmond. We drove to Smith Rock State Park via Portland (i-5South). We stopped in the mid at  US-26 route for this wonderful view of Mt. Hood. 

Mt.Hood view from US-26

Is it a rainbow cloud?!!!

It was 11 am. We drove 2 hrs. further and stopped at Peter Skene Ogden State Scenic Viewpoint, US-97, Terrebonne for lunch. You can see 2 large bridges along with a vertical cliff and river flowing underneath here and also enjoy the view of Mt. Hood and Mt. Jefferson. We also saw people doing bungee jumping from one of the bridge. In addition to this it also offers picnic tables under shades of large  trees, green grassy fields and restrooms.

On the way

Peter Skene Ogden State Scenic Viewpoint

We drove further and reached Smith Rock at 2.30pm. There are many easy-difficult trails here and we hiked Misery Ridge trail and it was definitely worth it. This trail is very steep with a elevation of 3300 ft. Once you reach the top the view is breathtaking!!!. You can also see the "Monkey Face Rock Transformation" the so called icon of the Smith rock  from the top. Some adventurous, professional climbers were rock climbing this 350 ft tall  structure!. After hiking till top you can continue further and complete the loop, but since people over there said its little lengthier to reach down we took the same trail that we hiked to come down. It was 5.30 pm.

Hiking trail

View from summit

Monkey face stone structure

Next we headed to Sparks Lake which is 1 hr. drive from Smith Rock. On the way to lake you will be driving Cascades Lakes National Scenic byway and you get to see amazing views of Mt. Bachelor.

After driving for 18 mi in this scenic byway we need to take left turn and drive for around 1.5 mi to Sparks lake. The road is unpaved here and lake is in a very remote place and it was too shady. We didn't feel very safe  there. We only saw 4-5 people and 2-3 campsites. May be because it was late evening!. However we enjoyed the scenic byway drive.

Sparks Lake

It was 7 pm and we started driving towards Hotel in Prineville city. We had reserved room at Best Western Prineville Inn. We reached hotel around 8.30 pm.

Next day morning the plan was to start by 8 am but got delayed by a hr. as we were tired because of previous day hiking and journey. We reached Painted Hills around 10 am. The view is stunning and its really a wonder to see hills in yellow, red and grey color. All these colors are due to the minerals in the layers of ash that got deposited and hardened during volcanic eruption. 

There are 5 small trails here and we covered Painted Hills overlook, Red Hill trail and Painted Cove trail.  We skipped Carol rim and Leaf Hill trail because it was too warm and we were not able to bear that. That's why they say the right time to visit here is early/late summer and we were there during peak summer!. Inspite of drinking enough water I was getting dehydrated and  felt like almost all my energy got drained when we completed all the trails.

Painted hills overlook

Painted Cove

Red Hill

It was 12 pm when we finished all the trails and we started driving towards Sheep Rock unit. Again the  entire drive is very scenic. We reached around 1 pm to Thomas Condon Paleontology Center  where you get to see the various fossil specimens. There is a laboratory as well where scientists work on researching million years ago plant and animal evolution that were habituating  in that area. You can see them working through glass window inside. From outside the center you can see huge mountains with different structure and grey-blue colors.

Drive a little further from this center and to the right you have a small picnic area with 2-3 tables under large trees. Thanks to those trees which provided a cool shade and a place to have lunch.

In the entire John Day Fossil Beds Monument its very rare to see these kind of rest areas and trees as its more of desert land.

Apart from Paleontology Center Sheep rock unit comprises of few trails. We only covered Foree trail here due to the unbearable warm weather.

From there Clarno unit was again 1 hr. drive and I did not have a zest to travel and hike further in that place. It was 3.30 pm and we decided to travel back to Home. We took 206 Route and drove back to Home via Yakima. 206 Route is one more scenic drive where you can see spectacular view of windmills and green fields. It was very cool and  windy out  there. 

Windmill viewpoint 206 Rd

Finally we reached Redmond around 10 pm. We drove totally 1000 miles!!! and we have thousands of memories and stories throughout this journey.

This trip gave us a good break from our routine day-to-day life , helped us re energize ourselves and was really worth it!!!