This small private lake was just down the road from the Cove Trail in the Painted Hills Unit of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. It's a lot smaller than is was in May. The volcanic deposits of the John Day River basin preserve a record of animal and plant life, spanning more than 40 million years. The red coloring is laterite soil that formed by flood plain deposits when the area was warm and humid. The green colors are glauconite which was formed when marine life was very slowly deposited. Typically this occurred in the Jurassic period. Glauconite can range from olive green to blue green. Here in the Painted hills area, the laterite soil is more olive green than the gold that appears here.
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