North Fork John Day River

Monument Peak (above) and North Fork John Day River (below)

After a rainy and windy night (kept dry by our cars), we actually woke up to decent weather which was a surprise since we pretty much only expected rain on this trip.  After breakfast, we headed up river to Kimberly and then headed up the North Fork John Day River to Monument.  Once we got to Monument, we headed up a gravel Wall Creek Road which parallels the North Fork.  Anyway, we stopped at a spot that looked decent which was also on public lands and Cory headed down to the river to go fishing.  Unfortunately, I was too cheap (furlough, remember) to have bought a fishing license so I opted to go on a hike instead.  I pretty much headed right uphill and just kinda kept going until I reached the cliffs of Monument Peak where I stopped for a bit, took a few pictures, and then turned around headed down because again I was getting nervous about looming storm clouds.

Cory hadn't caught anything so we drove a bit farther upriver and stopped at a few more places where Cory fished and I read my book.  Again, Cory didn't catch anything.  We ended up driving all the way up to where Wall Creek becomes Fern Creek and all the way to the divide before you drop down into Birch Creek.  My original plan had been to drive down Birch Creek and get back to the North Fork John Day River, but the road was deteriorating fast and it just wasn't worth it, so we turned around and fished one final spot on our way out; again, Cory caught nothing, but I got some good reading in.

We got back to Spray and had spent another evening split between beer and pizza at Ben's Bar and around our campfire.  This evening was dry, but right around freezing.