This first weekend of our spring break was supposed to be in the 60’s. Our original plan was to go camping but all campgrounds and dispersed camping has now been closed down too. I wanted to get away from the hordes around the local Bend options so we decided to do a day trip to The Painted Hills in north central oregon. It’s about 2 hours from Bend so my hope was it would keep the masses away. There were people but generally it was pretty quiet.
Our first stop was the Sheep Rock section of The Painted Hills. Here is a picture of Hunter and Noah with Sheep Rock in the background across from the John Day River.
From here, we headed to a place a few miles north called Blue Basin. The rocks have a blue green hue to them. I am red green color blind so it wasn’t that impressive for me but everyone else thought it was pretty impressive.
From Blue Basin we headed north west and stopped for lunch in Spray, OR.
Throughout the afternoon we drove through some amazing desert and mountain scenery on our way to The Painted Hills. We spent the late afternoon and evening exploring The Painted Hills and having dinner there. I brought our camp stove and we ate on top of the lookout.
There were beautiful earth tone colors on these amazing hills that only got richer as the day started to wind down.
