I was supposed to be heading down to East-Central Oregon today for a 2 night road trip (it's Memorial Day on Monday). The main objective was to go to the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument - basically a collection of very dramatic and (not uncoincidentally) very photogenic rock formations. But because we are really out in the middle of nowhere here, this trip required some careful planning. You need to plan where you are going to gas up (the rock formations are quite spread apart, with a very limited number of gas stations - which may have limited opening hours because they might not be self-service). You need to plan where you are going to eat - again, there are very few options with limited hours. And, as I was doing my research, most of the places to eat are not open on Sunday or Monday - exactly when I was going to be there. Great. And then something caught my attention on the National Monument website - it mentioned that Memorial Day weekend was the busiest weekend of the year. Well with limited services, only limited parking at a lot of the sites, and my dislike of big crowds - I made the difficult decision to postpone my trip. I definitely still want to go there - but maybe a mid-week visit is in order. Something I didn't consider when I postponed my trip was the weather. Because we are in desert country, I assumed it would be fine. Apparently not - as it said on a weather blog I read today, "if you are vacationing in Oregon this weekend ... sorry". This evening - cloudy with periods of rain, thunder possible. Tomorrow (which is when I would have done most of my sight-seeing) - a steady rain in the morning, showers continuing in the afternoon, cloudy with 40% chance of snow showers overnight (!). Monday - cloudy with showers. So now I feel better about not going.
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