Activities
Entrance to the park and its visitor center, museums, and exhibits is free, and trails, overlooks, and picnic sites at all three units are open during daylight hours year-round. No food, lodging, or fuel is available at the park, and camping is not allowed. However, lodging, groceries, gasoline, campsites, and other amenities are available elsewhere in the region. Hours of operation for the Cant Ranch vary seasonally. The ranch house contains a cultural museum, restrooms, and a drinking fountain as well as park staff headquarters. Other park buildings are open every day from March to October. They are closed on Federal holidays between Thanksgiving (the fourth Thursday of November) and Presidents Day (the third Monday of February). Operating hours for the main visitor center (Thomas Condon Paleontology Center) are from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Its amenities include a fossil museum, theater, education classroom, bookstore, restrooms, and drinking fountains. There is no cell phone or pay telephone service in the monument.
The Sheep Rock Unit has eight trails ranging in length from 300 feet (91 m) at the Mascall Formation Overlook to 3 miles (4.8 km) at Blue Basin. Four trails of a quarter-mile to 1.5 miles (2.4 km) long cross parts of the Painted Hills Unit. At the Clarno Unit, three separate quarter-mile trails begin at a parking lot along Oregon Route 218, below the face of the Clarno Palisades. Many of the trails have interpretive signs about the history, geology, and fossils of the region, and three trails—Story in Stone at the Sheep Rock Unit, and Painted Cove and Leaf Hill at the Painted Hills Unit—are accessible by wheelchair. Visitors are asked to stay on the trails and off bare rock and hardpan to avoid damage to fossils and fragile soils.
Ranger-led events at the monument include indoor and outdoor talks, showings of an 18-minute orientation film, hikes in Blue Basin, Cant Ranch walking tours, and astronomy programs at the Painted Hills Unit. These events are free and do not require reservations. Specific times for the activities are available from rangers at the monument. For students and teachers, the Park Service offers programs at the monument as well as fossil kits and other materials for classroom use.
Pets are allowed in developed areas and along hiking trails but must be leashed or otherwise restrained. Horses are not allowed on hiking trails, in picnic areas, or on bare rock exposures in undeveloped areas of the monument. Digging, disturbing, or collecting any of the park's natural resources, including fossils, is prohibited. Fossil theft is an ongoing problem. No mountain biking is allowed on monument land, although the Malheur National Forest east of Dayville has biking trails. Fishing is legal from monument lands along the John Day River for anyone with an Oregon fishing license. Rafting on the John Day River is seasonally popular, although the favored runs begin at or downstream of Service Creek and do not pass through the monument. Risks to monument visitors include extremely hot summer temperatures and icy winter roads, two species of poisonous rattlesnakes, two species of poisonous spiders, ticks, scorpions, puncturevine, and poison ivy.
Read more about this topic: John Day Fossil Beds National Monument
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