After last year’s tour, we decided the kids were big enough that our next tour would be on a pair of tandems. We finally got around to ordering the tandem for Ruth and me earlier this year. But with things how they are, we’re hoping to have for a weekend tour at Thanksgiving.

That left this summer open. We ended up with a modified tour. We drove up to Spray, OR, near the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. We’re using a rented house as a base of operations for a mix of hiking, non-loaded biking, and general lounging.

Today was a hike day. We started at the Thomas Condon Paleontology Center, for a brief 40 million year history of the fossil beds. Then we headed to the Blue Basin trailhead.

After some lunch, we decided on the shorter out-and-back Island in Time hike instead of the longer loop. It was already fairly late in the day, and we didn’t need to burn through all our kid (and adult) goodwill on the first day. The hike brought us along the canyon floor, though we didn’t find any fossils.

Now we’re back at the house for lounging. Tomorrow we’re hoping for an early start on a bike ride.