This morning, while I got the RV ready for travel, Trish took the kids to the local skate park. It was raining, which might be why there wasn’t much of a crowd:
This afternoon we drove West to high school friends Jason and Carrie’s house near Banks, where we will probably be spending the rest of the week. See the trip map for driving details.
We had a wonderful Rosh Hashanah and Shabbos with the Portland community. It was great to see all of our friends from the “old neighborhood” again!
Today we’re hanging out at the synagogue for the Fast of Gedaliah. We are planning to head out tomorrow morning, but we’ll be returning for Yom Kippur through Simchas Torah.
The RV is settled in the synagogue parking lot, and I’m finishing off updating this blog as Trish cooks up a storm for the upcoming three day holiday. The next blog post will be posted this coming Sunday.
A sweet and happy new year to all!
Today we visited the Sheep Rock unit of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument:
The visitor center, built in the last 15 years, is so much better than the old facility and does a great job of explaining the rich fossil record found here:
Since I used worked at Hancock Field Station in the Clarno Unit of the Monument (we also spent a weekend there on this trip), I was especially interested to see the portion of the visitor center that dealt with the Hancock Mammal Quarry:
Research continues on-site:
The kids received their Junior Ranger badges:
We continued on to visit the Painted Hills unit of the Monument. There’s no visitor center here, just great views of the multi-colored hills:
Continuing on, we drove over Mount Hood to arrive in Portland where we will be for the next three weeks for Rosh Hashanah through Simchas Torah. See the trip map for driving details.
Today we visited Hageman, Idaho to visit the visitor center for Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument. The Monument includes a portion of the Oregon Trail, so the visitor center had an Oregon Trail dress-up station:
Hagerman Fossil Beds are of the Pliocene Epoch, so they’re quite recent, relatively speaking:
The visitor center also houses an interim exhibit for Minidoka NHS. Like Manzanar and Heart Mountain, both of which we’ve visited (here and here), Minidoka is one of ten sites in the US where nearly 11,000 Americans were imprisoned during World War II for being of Japanese descent:
The kids completed workbooks and received Junior Ranger badges for Hagerman Fossil Beds NM and Minidoka NHS:
Continuing North and West, we are overnighting at a gas station in John Day, Oregon. See the trip map for driving details.
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