Cottonwood Canyon

As we have a tendency to do, we made a couple easy travel days into epic travel days recently. We left Waldo Lake, OR, with the goal of making it to Bend, a mere 3 hours away.

When we got to Bend, however, we decided to keep going to shorten our trip the next day. We still needed to drain the gray water tank and find fresh water, and those two tasks took way too long for various reasons. We didn't end up leaving Bend until after dinner and so we put the kids in pajamas and drove while they slept. A few hours later though, we were ready to find some camping, and we discovered an awesome spot.

Cottonwood Canyon is a new camp area along the John Day river. We spent the night and enjoyed a little exploration the next day.

While perusing the visitor center, we saw a brochure about local fossil beds. Had we read more carefully, we would've learned that the only one actually near us (and not that near) had only leaf fossils. But the brochure showed dinosaurs! And really cool dinosaur fossils! We assumed that there would be a really cool museum/exhibit at each fossil bed location. Well, you know what they say about assuming.

The 'short' drive took 2 hours because the road was so curvy. Then we got to the fossil beds and were quite underwhelmed. We managed to convince the toddler that it was still VERY cool, even though we hiked in heat to see a measly three leaf fossils, which are most definitely not as cool as dinosaur fossils.

at least the rocks were cool to look at...

heading out, 

having doubled our day's drive time