Cove Palisades State Park (Part Four)

Central Oregon Road Trip

Monday, May 23, 2022

The Cove Palisades State Park (Crooked River Campground)

Sunny and warm

I took a lot of photos on our final day at this campground, so I'm dividing the day into two posts. 

After lunch we took a drive over to the Deschutes Campground on the other side of the park. There's a wonderful beach with lots of picnic tables, but after driving around the campground, we decided we liked Crooked River Campground better. It has more grass, trees, and space between sites.

Before heading back to camp, we drove up to the viewpoint on the mesa where we discovered we had a great cell signal. We spent a little time relaxing with some ice cream as we caught up on our emails and the news.

Beach area on Deschutes River

We were the only ones around,

 but I bet it's crowded in the summer.

From The Cove Rattler:

The amazing basalt boulder is called the Crooked River Petroglyph, and used to reside on the western flank of the Crooked River, not far from the northern tip of The Island. The 18-ton rock was nearly covered by water as Lake Billy Chinook filled in 1964, but was rescued and put on display.

The carvings, called petroglyphs (whereas paintings are known as pictographs), are at least 2,000 years old but reflect a style of carving that is nearly 6,000 years old. People often ask what’s pictured on the rock, but the truth is, we don’t know. Some of these carvings were done by participants during profound spiritual ceremonies; other carvings were designed to warn of particular danger, or to represent an entity protecting the area. 

Ship Rock

Crooked River

Happy campers!