We spent an unrestful night on a mattress that was too soft and awoke to the same weather as yesterday, clouds and rain. We got ready to go and went downstairs for coffee and a muffin that was suspiciously like Costco's, although the nearest Costco is probably 200 miles from Mitchell! We left Mitchell at 0830, drove through scenic territory to get to the John Day Fossil Beds new museum and working paleontology lab. An extremely interesting and informative place, unlike any museum I have seen before. After that we drove a block down the highway to the old Cant Ranch house, now a cultural center. When I visited the JD Fossil Beds in the 80's this ranch house was the museum and ranch headquarters. We toured it and John walked the trail to the Sheep Rock Overlook, nice scenery with again the green colors from the rains. The clouds were low on the hills this morning. We drove from there to John Day, the town, stopping at the Mascal Overlook, it was cold and still raining.
In John Day we found a good place to eat, I had a delicious vegetarian pizza and raspberry lemonade with real raspberries in it. John had fish and chips. After lunch we were able to find the Chinese museum in town, we had to wait a few minutes in the parking lot until they reopened after the lunch hour. This is a very interesting store with many of the medicinal herbs and store as the Chinese doctor left them when he died in 1952. We had a very knowledgeable tour guide who told many stories of the 2 Chinese men who owned and ran the store and Doctors office.
Leaving John Day we backtracked the 6 miles to Mt. Vernon and got on Highway 395. From there to Pendleton it is a most scenic drive, up and down mountain passes and into beautiful valleys, as you get closer to Pendleton it turns into the high plains. The creeks and rivers are running swift and full to overflowing this spring, and in John Day we could see (through the cloudy tops), a mountain that had fresh snow - it was 48 degrees in John Day that morning!
We intended to stop at a Holiday Inn in Pendleton but after driving around not spotting it, we decided to use the freeway exit to find it - one problem - the freeway entrance was only for heading east! We exited at the next exit and it was great, it turned out to be OR route 11 to Walla Walla, which is the road we are taking tomorrow. There happened to be an Indian Casino and Hotel at this exit, I was not excited about staying at a Casino, but it turned out to be an OK room at a decent price. We had dinner at the casino restaurant, it was mediocre food to say the best!
John went into the spa, I rested in the room. We read awhile, then to bed for another long day tomorrow.