Ochocos and beyond- more pictures from the ride

The last post I left off with some pictures of my camp from the third night out. Day four started out with more climbing.  If there is one thing I feel like I do fairly well on a bike, it is climb hills.  Not racer fast by any means, but for a tourist and recreational rider I hold my own when the road turns skyward. Some people collect stamps, others coins, spoons, plates, crystal doorknobs, shot glasses, whatever.  I started collecting summit signs. Now, the various state departments of transportation would get a bit miffed were I to actually take home the signs, so pictures have to do.  I'm sure I missed one on the Santiam pass, but here is the first one collected on this trip:

On the small side, but still a keeper.

From here it was an easy cruise down in to Mitchell.  Not much traffic, nice, but not spectacular scenery, and enough wildlife sightings to keep it interesting, but no truly unusual or noteworthy creatures.  One deer decided to cross the road in a manner that made me really glad for the very effective brakes my bike is equipped with, but basically uneventful. 

Since the point of this  trip is to see the area I am passing through, I took the business route through Mitchell.  Outside the first cafe I came across a couple of fresh out of high school guys I had met in Sisters who were riding to Missoula, Montana, along with Diana, who had just finished the veterinary medicine program at Oregon State and was headed to Georgia on her bike.  They were saying their farewells to yet another rider who had covered most of the contiguous states, and figured there was one more American continent still to explore.  He was headed west to the coast, then south, the rest of us east, so I went from a solo rider to one of a group of four.  A few hours later it started feeling like lunchtime, and when we found a shady wide spot along the road, it was occupied with this group:

Turned out to be Laurie, whom I had met on the climb up the Santiam pass two days prior, and the rest of her group.  Their plan was to overnight in Dayville, which seemed reasonable to the rest of us, so one who had become four was now ten.  Riding on tour with a group of ten is not at all like racing in peloton.  The only jockeying for position was just getting close enough when someone was telling a story you wanted to hear.

We continued on over another, even smaller pass,

past the Wheeler historical marker,

and continued on to Dayville.  If you have been to Dayville you are probably trying to determine what the appeal was.  There is not much more than a post office, two mini marts, a cafe that never seems to be open, and a few dozen homes.  It seems that at some point the good Presbyterian folks in Dayville realized that their town sat on a major cycling route, and that touring cyclists sometimes like to sleep indoors, maybe take a shower or wash some grimy bike shorts.  If I may continue to make some assumptions, I will guess that these good folks had read the parts in their Bibles that talk about doing unto others, and loving your neighbor, and decided to do something about it.  The doors of Dayville Presbyterian are never locked, and the sign inside welcomes cyclists to sleep, cook, shower and do laundry, just please refrain from smoking, drinking, or sleeping on the pew cushions.  If you can leave a donation, great.  If not, that is okay too.  Judging from the number of new looking appliances with the label "purchased with biker donations", I would guess that most are able to leave at least a few dollars.  Someone sent this to the church:

Notice the lower right corner.

We stayed, we washed and cooked and slept and donated, then the next morning went on our way, knowing that our group would shrink soon, as I turned south at John Day and the rest of them continued east.

Back Home- time for some pictures

I'm home again, the trip is done, real life is taking over again.  At least I have access to a proper computer and Internet connection, so now I can post some of the pictures.  I'll try not to put up too many in any one post, so those with a slower connection need not suffer too much.  Pictures not big enough for you? Just click on them, they grow.

Lets go back to the beginning.  The first couple of days were devoted to getting out of the Willamette Valley, so pictures are a little sparse, but I have a few.

From the very beginning, here is the beast, fully loaded:

.

And, just his bike:

I don't know the total weight, it was a conscious decision not to weigh it, I was sure I would be happier not knowing.  I saw a lot of rigs on the road that looked to be loaded up a lot heavier.

I was pretty focused on just getting miles on the first day, heading across highway 224 from Estacada to Detroit, but I am a sucker for a good wildflower shot:

Too bad the yellow is Scotch Broom, an invasive species that is spreading rapidly around here.  Still pretty to look at, as long as you don't think too much about it.

If you have been following this from the beginning of the trip, you may remember that day two, crossing the Santiam pass in to Sisters, was not the best day of the trip.  With better weather there are some great views on that route, but the rain was heavy enough that day that you couldn't see much, and I just wanted to get through the day.  By day three though, the skies had cleared, I was headed east, and the landscape was starting to remind me what this trip was about.  I like the high, sagebrush and juniper desert and a road that keeps rolling into the horizon.

I kept rolling, past Prineville and along the Ochoco Reservoir.  I think I mentioned my surprise at spotting these guys:

Yep, pelicans.  Lots of pelicans, a bird I had not realized inhabited Oregon, especially not this far inland.

After a couple of fairly hard ride days, I was ready to make day three a little easier, which meant camping in the Mitchell city park wasn't going to happen.  Time to head towards the national forest and find a nice spot off the road for my night's rest.

This looked like it held promise:

Just past the gravel pull out was a pile of rocks and logs blocking automotive access to a decommissioned forest road along a stream.  I followed it a couple of hundred yards past this:

and made camp here:

among these:

I told you I was a sucker for wildflower pictures.

That wraps up the first three days, and day four brought new and different adventures, I will pause here for now, and continue the journey in the next post.