I saw a post on instagram where someone had visited this national monument and it immediately reminded me of the Badlands. I knew I had to add it to the list of stops. Oregon was really cool because there were so many different terrains and ecosystems throughout the state. We started on the coast, then drove through the forest, saw some mountains and volcanos, visited a waterfall, then wound up in the desert. I have a connection to the desert that I don't have with most other places. Maybe it's because it is nothing like what I grew up seeing, and is so different from where I live now. The deep reds and yellows against a blue sky are really eye-catching to me. Basically I really enjoyed this part of the trip. We started at the Painted Hills unit first. This park was a little different in that there were 3 units that consisted of the park but they are all about an hour away from each other. We only were able to see 2 out of the 3 but I quite enjoyed both. The painted hills unit were these rolling mounds with striations of color, each layer of color represented various geological eras. For example the red coloring is soil that has been broken down from the trees and agriculture that once thrived there. The black soil is broken down vegetation that once lived there. The purple / grey soil is old volcanic ash that covered the forest and solidified. It is amazing to me what hundreds of thousands of years - millions of years will cause the environment to do. The other unit we saw was the Clarno unit. This unit is known for its fossils, The Palisades are the most prominent landform and are volcanic mudflows that formed almost 40 millions years ago! It was once a semi-tropical rainforest where 4 toed horses, huge rhino like brontotheres, crocodilians, and meat-watching creodonts once roamed. Their fossils have been found amongst the rocks, along with a huge range of plant life. There was a museum that had wax figures of what these creatures once looked like.
