After making the decision to avoid the last piece of the John Day Fossil Beds, we rerouted ourselves further west in central OR. Originally, our plan had been to visit Crater Lake, but with more smoke further south, we opted to stay "north" and happened upon the Palisades Cove State Park. What a stunningly beautiful area!
The National Forest campgrounds were all closed, as well as many other campgrounds in the area. We opted to stay in the open one and it was nice. We didn't realize that we were high on a plateau above the Crooked and Deschutes Rivers. After our arrival, we immediately took our bikes out for a ride and realized what sort of a plateau we were on. The sunset was gorgeous that night and we opted to spend the next day at the park. That day we hiked and biked and unfortunately the clouds moved in and we didn't get a second amazing sunset. But we did see great views of Mt. Jefferson, a place that I had never heard of. It is pictured above. I'm sure that this place is VERY crowded in the "high season", but visiting it in October was perfect. About a dozen other campers shared the campground with us and the fall colours were just past peak, but still hanging on. Here is a view from a plateau top showing the 2 rivers and their reservoir. I'd highly recommend a visit if you can get there when it is not busy.
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