The Painted Hills of Oregon

Oregon has been pushing the "Seven Wonders Of Oregon" lately and on that list is the Painted Hills! We waited and picked a time when we'd have a full three-day weekend to go. The drive from Scappoose to Mitchell seemed to take forever! It was around six hours I think, which for me in a car is close to forever.. We arrived in the evening and drove up to the hills, we got out at the first main parking area with dozens of other people and enjoyed the view like they were. Well, some of them anyway. Have you ever noticed in a popular/beautiful place there are more people turned away from the gorgeous site waiting for their photo to be taken than people who are actually looking at it?

 
After walking on a short gravel path we took a seat and marveled at the striped hillsides in front of us. They had stripes of red and green and spotty stripes of black.

   As the sun began descending, we went into Mitchell to find a place to park, and sleep. The town is literally like two hundred yards long. It has a general store, a hot dog food truck, a restaurant, a hotel or maybe two, and a community park for RV's and tents and those of us saving money and sleeping in their car. Tyler found dinner,

and I ate some salad I had packed. We took a walk to the end of town, looped out onto the highway and walked back into town, and back to our car, all in a whole of about ten minutes. Needless to say, the main draw to the area is the hills!

  Bright and early we were up after a very cold and rough night that consisted of next to no sleep since my boyfriend coughed quite consistently through the night. The morning was warm already. Our map showed us a series of five hikes, all totaling less than three miles. I had really hoped there would be a lot more trails than that! Since we'd done the first one yesterday, we started on the lookout trail. It took us up onto a nearby ridge to offer a bird's eye view of the striped hills now below us.

 

The other hikes were short, and rather lame. They went around small hills (more like mounds) and described the process of the earth, as well as the colors of it. It was interesting to read but by early afternoon we had our picnic lunch and were ready to leave, there wasn't much else to see.

   I remembered a sign outside of Mitchell reading "Rock Museum" and I was intrigued. We followed the sign and talked to a woman who had spent her whole life looking at, examining, mining, and just plain loving rocks! She is a wonderful woman and her museum, although the building is nothing fancy, the rock collections she has are really incredible. There is even a blacklight room filled with phosphorescent rocks that glow lime green and orange in different shapes and patterns.
  If you go to Mitchell to see the hills, don't skip the rock museum! The lady is awesome and very knowledgable! But take cash, she doesn't accept cards. The museum itself is free but she has so much stuff for sale as well that you'll be eager to take something home!
   In the end, you really only need a day to see all painted hills; there aren't many but they are fantastic to see!