Day 3 and Day 2 were my favorite days. After an easy climb out of Mitchell we descended for what felt like hours down this awesome canyon on our way to the John Day River. After hitting the river we had some easy riding on fairly nice gravel until the final drop into Priest Hole which had some pretty loose spots on the way down. After we got to Priest Hole I realized I had been forgetting to drink enough water with all the easy sections and was probably dehydrated. Thankfully this was a great spot to spend half a day so we cooked up lunch and swam around in the river while we were treated to an awesome display of raptors - I think 4 red tailed hawks having a party across the river and 2 other hawks we weren't able to identify. After I pepped up some we decided to continue on in order to have an easier day 4 so we cruised over to the Painted Hills and took our time soaking in the scenery before filling up all our water and continuing on to find a dispersed camping site. The climb out of the Painted Hills was long but thankfully not steep, however we underestimated how long it would take to get out of all the ranch land so ended up pitching camp on the side of the dirt road we were on, thankfully we were the only people using it so we had a peaceful sleep