Category Archives: road trip

Other things (day 6.5)

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In eastern Oregon, there are so few people and so much land, the silence is only broken by the sound of our wheels turning and the wind blowing through the trees. We were surprised to find that when we go under electric wires, they are making a buzzing sound. We thought maybe we were mistaken but it happened more than once.
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We pass all kinds of roads with funny names like “Telephone Road” and “Screeech Alley Loop”
And lots of others I can’t remember. We were in for sure the middle of nowhere in the forested mountains when all of a sudden there was a brown (like National Park Service brown) that said “Social Security Point”. It seemed dangerously out of place like a camouflage for the KKK or something. I have heard that OR has the largest KKK membership but why? there are no African American people here, really.
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We’ve passed through rattlesnake Creek and Murderers Creek and always there is a river running by our road. We are now by the Powder River and often go to sleep with the sound of a river running by. We are riding on back roads which is why we are hardly ever near a real town but today we are in a 9,000 person town and it feels gigantically awful and crass (although we are looking forward to the health food store and I am at a cafe where I am having the first real cup of coffee in a week).
We are hanging here as we are taking the bus to Missoula, Montana tomorrow because Noah wants to go home. It’s amazing to have some free time. When we are on the road we are doing everything as fast as we can. Taking down camp, packing, riding furious to get to our destination in daylight, then setting up camp. Now we are relaxing and it feels right. 20120625-114347.jpg

June 24, Day 6 part two

So we started out a little late 8:30ish after breakfast.
We were looking forward to what looked like a town called Austin junction after the first mountain. On the map it said it had a restaurant, a gas station, a post office and a grocery store. When we got to Austin junction it was the intersection of two streets with one store and since she was the only game in town it cost us $45.00 for three sandwiches and some power bars and cookies. Gas there was $4.90 a gallon. A. 44 cent stamp was 50 cents!
We had to eat so we had to pay.
The food lasted us over the next two mountains. It was a super hard day

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After some 70 miles and three mountains we were beat as we pulled into baker city which has as many Christian churches as San Francisco has cafes and it was Sunday so Main street was closed.
We managed to find a fantastic RV campground with a beautiful granite bathroom and shower and a super clean laundry room. We set up tent and then went to the truck corral by the interstate for dinner. Super nice waitress. Awful food. Sorry there is so much emphasis on food in this but when you are exercising full on 12 hpurs a day there is a lot of focus on sustenance and how to get it

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Noah is completely done, spent, exhausted and can’t go on. The next stretch to Missoula is way harder than what we have been doing.
Noah wants to go home. We are taking a day off in baker city to figure out a bus or something to Missoula do Noah can go home from there.
He has ridden a heroic week and his leg muscles show it

June 24, Day 6 Prarie to Baker City part one

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This is us this morning after breakfast in Prarie. The waitress at the diner who was neither young or old had a full restaurant at seven in the morning being the only place of its kind for miles and miles. Still, she came out and offered to take a photo of the three of us. That’s how nice people are out here. I’m attributing it to the spaciousness of it all.

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June 21, Day 3, Sisters Or to Prineville OR

Great breakfast in sisters Oregon. There was a health food store there too.
A couple of people in sisters told us to detour from our map and go on ” the road less traveled” with less traffic.It was beautiful as is all Oregon. It was a bit tricky feeling like we knew where we were going but we did.
It seemed to go on and on however and we were way too hot. We are eating out of tiny grocery stores (what would be called “corner stores” in the city) and quicky marts and it’s cheap but a drag. These towns are so small there is not much in them and fifty miles between towns. It is hours and hours of gorgeous wilderness.
There is water everywhere. Fairy tale like lakes and literally always a river beside the road.
Just when we thought we couldn’t continue from being so tired, and thought we had another 14 miles to go once we got to the freeway, when we got to the freeway intersection, we were over joyed to see we were one mile outside of our next town which was Prineville Oregon.
We found a super candy and ice cream store that was air conditioned. We had milk shakes that we’re fantastic and then we went to the Laundrymat. There wasn’t any deterrent to buy so we hand washed with our soap and water bottles then threw them in the washer and dryer.
While they were in there, we went to the grocery store and bought dinner and breakfast and lunch for the next day.
The people in Oregon are super nice but the economy looks very depressed. It seems like fifty percent of the homes on the beautiful rivers in the country are for sale ($150,000) and a lot of the farms are too.
It is all white people in Oregon and they all seem to be Christian (Protestant variety) There are no African Americans at all, every now and then there is a Russian type. But so anyway, they are all very nice to me (a white person).

June 20,Day 2 over McKenzie pass

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There was no bus
We rode 4 miles and found a deli !!!
There I had a miraculous cappacino and after that it was 35 hard miles up a mountain!!!
There were times when we thought we couldn’t make it.most of the ride really. When we were just at the top riding wheel to wheel going soo slow a band of Mosquitos attacked us visciously. Wow! Soon After that it was down down down down into the town of Sisters Oregon which is a really nice town. We got to a bike store and realized as we pumped up our tires that we had been riding on 60 pounds of pressure instead of 100!!! AND wE DID IT!!! I’m very proud of us
After that we slept in the city campground which was nice and even had a shower

june 19, Day 1, Eugene OR to Rainbow OR

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Today we rode fifty miles along the McKensie river
We are camping in a nice spot by the river
We have a lovely set up with nice pads and sleeping bags in a nice tent.
We are all so tired we are going to bed at 7:30!!!
Wilderness is everywhere and there is fifty miles before food tomorrow. Nothing we’d call real food here. We are grateful for chicken pot pies for dinner. Fifty miles before food tomorrow and thirty of that is a 4,000 foot climb. Really? Really. At least that’s how it looks from the info we have. We have stocked up with power bars. Hoping to leave camp at six and be to food by lunch

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I’m no boy scout and I wasn’t prepared

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To find hotels so lifeless and expensive

as I am now researching this for the first time.

Two days before we leave,
I have changed my mind from inside to outside. . From hotel to campsite.
It’s more work, but will also be more fun and more people.

Today I got what we need to camp our way across.
I spent a lot of time in REI balancing out money and weight.
The cheap heavy tent or the expensive light one? Over The Cascades? the Rockies?
I got a solar recharger (sans hotel walls)
I bought a Solar flashlight and towels that weren’t really made of cloth.
A purple titanium spork so as not to engage in the plastic throw away kind
Etc
I was in an altered state moving through the sections of the cavernous store.
Resisting lots of etc

I was surprised when I got out to see that I’d spent almost the entire day there
And came out to a parking ticket.

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No locking mechanism

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It seemed like a miracle or at least an answer to an unasked prayer, the way friends can be.

When I decided not to go across the hot desert but to leave the west coast from farther north, my friend volunteered to drive our bikes up North for us. I was thrilled and I ordered a 3 bike bike rack online. It didn’t come in time so at the latest moment I bought another one in a store here as my friend was leaving that night

When we unboxed the rack we both saw that there was no way to securely lock the bikes on the car so she couldn’t take them.

The next day the online bike rack came in the mail.
I put it in my car to return it.

That night my car was robbed. They took the bike rack.

 

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Changing One’s Mind

Noah has not been as committed as Sarita and I.

First he wasn’t interested and then he was.

And then he wasn’t.

He was trying to decide in an all or nothing way. We bought stuff. We returned stuff.

Recently we discovered the half-way option

He can do part of the trip.

He is starting out with us and at some point we will ship him back. This will depend on his mood and the proximity of a good airfare. Maybe Missoula Montana, maybe farther.