The river was named for John Day, a member of the Astor Expedition, an overland expedition to the mouth of the Columbia River that left from St. Louis, Missouri in 1810. Day wandered lost through this part of Oregon in the winter of 1811–12.
Wheat fields of the Columbia Plateau
Wind Farms
We started our trip at the Clarno bridge on Sunday, June 28th. It was a gorgeous day, blue sky and a nice breeze blowing. I caught First Fish of the trip. After a short while we stopped at the John Day Fossil Beds to hike around. Pretty sure I saw a cougar track near a cave there. About 5:00 that evening we arrived at first camp. Mulberry Springs Campground was very nice. Many trees for shade including Mulberry, Black Walnut, Black Cherry and Apricots which were ripe and wonderful. Collecting the apricots from the ground we discovered a small rattlesnake at the base of one of the trees. We did not disturb him and he was gone next morning.
Rattlesnake
Monday, June 29th 9:00 a.m while packing up the boats for the day's journey Elly found a tiny, almost clear in color scorpion. Maybe half an inch long and you could nearly see through it. Yikes! I would definitely prefer the bigger, easier to see ones. Tim caught lots of fish this day while I rowed the boat. About 5:00 we pulled in to second camp. This was Red Wall Camp. Huge basalt boulders are in the river. After dinner Ben spotted a small bull snake in camp.
There were many slow elk (cows) near us and they were mooing at 5:00 a.m. on Tuesday, June 30th. Day three, and everybody got up a little earlier today. Today we saw a cabin along the river, shot through the narrows and passed Devil's Canyon. It was getting much hotter as the week went on and we made a point of finding a lunch spot with a tree for shade. We did find such but then none of us did sit in the shade, which we all laughed about afterward. Tim and I did some rock hunting here and found lots of quartz. We passed by 30-mile canyon and caught many small fish today. We found a Great beach with a wonderful swimming hole and happily unloaded for the evening.
Running Clarno Rapids
Canyon walls
Columnar Basalt
Third Camp - Beach camp. There were many trees here for shade and we had a yummy dinner. Henning said it would be impossible to row the kayak standing up. Us girls said we could do it, so we all raced down to the river for the standing up kayaking contest. All the girls could do it and half the boys could do it. This was lots of fun.
I am working on inserting the KAYAK VIDEO HERE
Day Four - Wednesday, July 1 was a really hot day with some personal disappointments for me. Had to pass up the geocache I was looking forward to finding and we could not get a shady camp. Camp 4 - HOT Camp was our home for the night. I was overwhelmingly hot and read almost an entire book that evening, preferring to be alone rather than share my grumpy attitude with the whole group.
Day 5 - Thursday, July 2nd was a better day for me albeit uneventful. We had to make up time today so mostly we just rowed. Tonight we stayed at Hoot Owl camp which was nice and had some shade. I started a new book and read most of the evening. The moon is very bright tonight. Pictures of Hoot Owl Rock can be viewed on my web album. Hard to believe that it was formed by erosion alone. I thought for sure someone had carved it.
River Scenery
Day 6 - Friday, July 3rd. All were up early this morning. A beautiful, cool morning but the sun came up and proved to be even hotter than all the previous days. The fishing was much better today and I finally caught one about 13 inches. I spent most of the day just fishing and rowing. We planned to camp at the last Large campsite on this stretch of river where there are also Petroglyphs and Indian artifacts to see in a cave there. But a man had arrived there before us and even though he was just one person he insisted on taking the whole large campground for himself, forcing us to continue on to a terribly small and buggy campsite downstream.
Sixth Camp - Bug camp was, as you can imagine - buggy. For whatever reason this spot had a lot of plant life, including a lot of grass. The site is jammed up against a rock wall at a bend in the river. There are a few trails through the tall grass and a few shade trees. I have never seen so many ants in one place in all my life. Ants, beetles, crickets, scorpions and rattle snakes shared our camp. I was glad this was our last night out and that I would be getting a shower the next day. I did not sleep well at all this night as I was slapping bugs all night long. Next morning while loading the boats Henning pointed out that I had just stepped over a scorpion. A much different one this time. Big and black. Video of him is here....
Our last day on the river was a short one as we had only a few miles left to go to Cottonwood Canyon boat ramp. I was very pleased to learn that I am able to row a big 15 foot boat loaded with gear, weighing about 600 pounds. Good thing I've been going to the gym.
