Oregon's Painted Hills

My wife and 12 year old daughter accompanied me out to Central Oregon on assignment, and we used the opportunity to visit Painted Hills – part of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. Unusually mild winter weather made the visit extra pleasant, and we had the entire place to ourselves. We didn't see a soul.


From Wikipedia: Painted Hills is named after the colorful layers of its hills corresponding to various geological eras, formed when the area was an ancient river floodplain. The black soil is lignite that was vegetative matter that grew along the floodplain. The grey coloring is mudstone, siltstone, and shale.^[3] The red coloring is laterite soil that formed by floodplain deposits when the area was warm and humid.^{[4]An abundance of fossil remains of early horses, camels, and rhinoceroses in the Painted Hills unit makes the area particularly important to vertebrate paleontologists.[5]}



Painted Hills, part of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument.


Painted Hills, Oregon


On the way home this old bunk house caught my eye. I don't normally photograph abandoned structures – but this lonely building sitting in a patch of sun was irresistible. It appears to be in the early stages of a slow motion collapse and resembles a warped illustration of a building...

Angry Rattler

I first spotted this rattlesnake in a horse pasture when it startled a horse – the horse then made a brief effort to stomp it to death, but wisely moved away. Then a house cat ran out from garden and began to harrass the thing. The snake went from angry to furious, and began striking at the cat – which was just quick enough to avoid getting tagged.

The snake took refuge under a rock fence brace, and I put the camera on an extension arm which was just able to fit into the hidey hole. I could see nothing, but I could hear the angry snake take offense at the intrusion. I used a remote trigger to quickly crank off a few frames and then left it in peace. Here is one of frames. The camera was outfitted with a superwide lens, so the snake is just inches from the lens.