Fort Rock State Park ~ Oregon's Outback

We took off mid-week to spend a few days in Central Oregon - one of our favorite places. While we were there, we set off to explore a new to us place - Fort Rock State Park in Oregon's Outback.

Rising up out of nowhere, this natural looking fort was fun to explore. And we were the ONLY people there! I don't know if you can tell, but it's a ring of rock and was believed to at one time be a complete ring. One side is now open, having eroded away. In 1938 an archaeologist uncovered the world's oldest sandals at this site. They were radiocarbon dated to 9000 years ago.

It looks barren and desolate, but there were signs of life everywhere. We even think we saw a jackrabbit. Nestled high in the rocks were nest for some sort of bird of prey. Directly below the nests we found lots and lots of pellets and skeletal remains of smaller animals. A couple years ago the girls took a class at our science museum where they got to dissect an owl pellet...here we were picking them up and dissecting them and finding all sorts of cool things.

Here are some of the nesting areas we identified...

In the "town" (if you could call it that), there was a museum...a replica of an old town. It was closed and they didn't allow anyone to walk past the fence so we aren't exactly sure what it was all about.