Fort Vancouver and John Day Fossil Beds

August 11, 2010

This morning we spent an hour at the FHWA Western office getting my laptop fixed! After that morning adventure we collected Fort Vancouver National Historic Site. It only had two routes so we were done pretty quick. It is a nice, small park. http://www.nps.gov/fova/We then made our way 4 1/2 hours across Oregon to John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. Doesn't sound like a bad drive but most of it was pretty desolate and there wasn't much to look at. To try and make the drive "interesting" Oregon DOT put up signs saying "Journey Through Time". I guess they have to try something. We did see several wind farms and I got a quick photo.

John Day Fossil Beds is also a smaller park with only two paved roads for us to collect. We were done in about 1 hour, the routes were about 15 miles apart. We stopped into the visitor center and they have a fossil lab with 3 workers cleaning off fossils they have found in the area. It was pretty interesting. http://www.nps.gov/joda/



We had one minor casualty today. This is the first time I've seen this during my 6 years on the job. A bird flew in front of the truck and got stuck. We didn't notice until we parked the truck for dinner. A sad, sad day.