Road Trip 2016 - Part 1 Oregon

This summer we had a conflict which prevented us from making a trip to North Carolina for our family reunion. But we couldn't just stay home, so we headed off on a two week road trip in the motorhome to see some new sights and some old favorites.

We wandered east on a Sunday and spent a couple days in Dayville, Oregon at the Fish House Inn and RV Park. We've stayed here before, and it's a good spot from which to see the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument and to visit Kam Wah Chung State Heritage Site in John Day.

I'm a big fan of the National Park System, and with this being the NPS Centennial, I wanted to visit a few.  We've been to the fossil beds before, but the improvements to the visitors center exhibits were worth the trip again. I do find it interesting that the man, John Day, was never within 100 miles of the site or the town of John Day, but since it's on the banks of the John Day River, which he named, the name transferred and stuck.

Sheep Rock at John Day Fossil Beds

Fossils in the Visitors Center

We drove into John Day to specifically visit Kam Wah Chung. Ten years ago, the museum wasn't open when were in town, and I'm really glad we stopped this time. During the 1870's, when gold was discovered in Oregon, thousands of Chinese miners poured into the John Day area. Kam Wah Chung served as a store, lodgings and medical office for the Chinese community. When "Doc" Hay  died in 1952, the building was boarded up and left virtually intact. It's a great museum.

Kam Wah Chung exterior

Kam Wah Chung interior

As we continued east we stopped at Unity Lake State Park for our lunch break. It's interesting how you can go for miles amid the dry grasslands and then pull up over a rise to see a lake.

Unity Lake