We got up at 6 am and packed up the car and headed for Corvallis for a 9 am meeting for Mr C. The guy got sick and didn’t show up until 10 am. I could have used another hour of sleep. And, Scooter and I had to hang out in the parking lot waiting. Scooter was a good boy and thankfully, it was not too hot.

We stopped in downtown Corvallis and picked up sandwiches and had a picnic along the Willamette. Here is Scooter waiting patiently for us and some street art.

Then we headed for the Oregon Coast, taking our favorite drive along the Umpquah River.

Some shots along the coast.

We drove 101 into California and were happy to see that Paul Bunyan is still there. He really harangued Mark when he was about 11 years old – 35 years ago.

It started to get cooler as we drove south. Here is the ubiquitous cloud bank out over the Pacific.

And a pretty sunset as we drove into Arcata for the night.

We got here about 8 pm  – a long day. But it will only be about 5 hours to Sonoma County tomorrow.

Just a quick check in. We packed up and left the John Day Fossil Bed area this morning. We arrived in Bend and found the downtown area where we had lunch on a patio by the Deschutes River and walked around the shops for a bit. Then we drove out to the Deschutes National Forest to find the Tumalo Falls.

We hiked up to the top of the falls and I took some more photos.

We then checked into our hotel. We had dinner at the restaurant here. Again, we got a great table on the deck right next to the river. It was a gorgeous evening. My steal was not cooked to my specifications so the waiter comped us this gigantic chocolate dessert. It is a chocolate bag filled with dark and white chocolate. We could barely make a dent in it.

Tomorrow, we will head back to hot Portland and reunite with Mr Scooter.

This was a pretty good day, with less driving! We went back out to the Painted Hills area and drove back to two different short hiking trails. The first was leaf hill which is an area where many botanical fossils have been found. For some reason, I lost the photos that I took there. It was interesting, but not that photogenic. The next area, Painted Cove, was breathtaking. It was an area where you could get up close and personal with a painted hill. Here is Mr C walking on the special walkway.

Here are a couple of other shots.

The lower  rock is really lavender – it is lava rock. Click on this and you will see red, lavender and chartreuse with some shades of blue.

I took this shot with Instagram on my iPhone. I did no fiddling with the color. This is how it looked.

We then went back to the overlook of the famous painted hills. The greens were much more vivid in the morning light. The whole place was a riot of color.

I took a panorama shot with an app I have on my iPhone. Click to see it enlarged.

After lunch, we drove out to the town of Fossil. We were going to go to the fossil beds, but it proved to be a bit more of a drive than we want to take. The landscape ran the gamut of wow to bucolic farm scenes.

This was a view driving back to Mitchell.

Tomorrow, we will pack up and head to Bend for some R & R at the Riverhouse Resort. We were going to go to Joseph, but are going to save that for another trip when we can stay longer.

I think it is cooler here than Portland. We have the windows open, feeling a cool breeze and watching a French film we found in the DVD library here at the cottage. So I shall say adieu! We will be driving back to 98° in Portland on Friday!