Thursday, August 20, 2009
Day 64
We started our day by taking some photos out on the deck overlooking town. Note that these are the first new clothes since the Frederick Photos back in days 4-5.
Also be sure to have a look at my hands. Those, coupled with my awesome zebra tan on my feet, made me stand out pretty well in any crowd.
Next step was to get in touch with a bike shop. Way back before we'd left we'd asked Larry at Mt Airy Bikes for some advice. He'd suggested we talk to the Bike Gallery. Jillian's mother had talked with them before, so we had a good idea of where to go, but we called again to verify a few things.
Before we could go there we first stopped at a Pack and Mail. It took some work, but they found us a box big enough for our trailer, which we packed with just about as much as we could. That cost about $70 to ship - UPS isn't cheap. BOBs are also hard to measure, apparently, as it took a few tries for the Pack and Mail people to make us a box the right size.
Then we went over to their Division location where we met with Peter Lunoak. He first had to find us a box. Standard procedure for shipping a bicycle is to pack it into an old bike box. Our bike proved to be a little too big. In fact, the only box they had that would fit us was a huge electric scooter box. We took some measurements and called UPS. The box was too big for UPS to take. That meant shipping via Amtrak Express. Since we'd be boarding a plane soon, Peter agreed to take care of delivering the bike to the train station and working out a price with them. We agreed on a price that we both thought was fair (having not shipped Amtrak Express before, Peter wasn't sure how much it was going to be).
Bike dropped off, it was time to head out to dinner and to see a baseball game. We stopped at the Duck Store in Portland before getting dinner with Jillian's relatives. Then we were off to a baseball game. On the way, we saw things that made us love Oregon even more, including:
Afterward it was time to head home. We made sure to stop at Powell's, which fills an entire city block full of books. We only had an hour before they closed, which made us both very sad. We all could have spent a day in there. Both Jillian and I grabbed a few books as reading material for the plan ride.
Day 65
The next day we got up late and spent quite a bit of time blogging, napping, and doing laundry. For lunch we went out to a Pasta Bar/Buffet place, which was an excellent way to get lots of food. It was interesting - our metabolisms had already started to slow way down, and I wasn't able to eat nearly as much food as I'd expected. But I was still thirsty, all the time.
We also stopped at REI on the way home. The employees there weren't nearly as excited about our trip as we felt they should have been.
That night we had a fantastic dinner with Jillian's relatives before turning in for some sleep.
Day 66
Our flight left pretty early in the morning, and featured a stop in Salt Lake City. Jillian spent a lot of the flight not feeling very well, and I mostly read or napped. One thing that helped was the free drink tickets Jillian's parents shared with us (they'd gotten them for free on the flight out).
We landed and drove back to Lancaster. The flight took most of the day. It was good to be back in Pennsylvania though. But then, maybe it was just good to know where I was sleeping at night, and to know what I was having for dinner.
Day 67
We had quite the welcome back party at Jillian's parents house. Saw a lot of friendly faces and even gave some advice to a future bike tourist. After the party we loaded my car up with as much stuff as we could. I drove home that night - Jillian decided to wait a day in order to play Ultimate Frisbee in Gettysburg. I thought she was crazy, but whatever.
It felt good to be home.
| posted at: 04:11 |
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Monday, August 17, 2009
Today started with a rush to look normal for the news cameras.
We answered some questions, unpacked and repacked our gear for the camera, and generally tried to sound like we weren't simply the really exhausted and half glad to be done cyclists we were.
Afterward we gave Aaron and Laura a call, and agreed on a place to get together. Riding through Eugene was pretty awesome. Cyclists were everywhere. Coffee with Aaron and Laura was fun, too. We would love to live in Eugene.
Our new friends helped us find our way to the bicycle paths that traverse the city, which were extensive. Both were on their way to work, which they rode to every day. We were a little envious. Bike infrastructure was really amazing. We stopped again at a gas station just west of town, and took a shot of a very important sign:
Just 53 miles left. Tomorrow we could even sleep in.
OR-126 wasn't that great of a highway to ride. The shoulders were tiny, and there was a good deal of traffic. But, this being Oregon, people gave us lots of space.
We stopped again down the road, and then again at another gas station even further on in Noti. I felt exhausted and beat up.
From Noti we had a hill to climb - but it was less than 800 feet high.
On the far side of that climb, we saw an important sign.
I needed some Espresso. We stopped. Jillian wanted some berries, but wasn't sure she could eat an entire container and I simply wasn't interested. After some discussion with the clerk, she decided to go for it.
She ate them all without much trouble. We finally dragged ourselves away and rode on, along wonderfully shaded roads. We soon arrived at a tunnel, which had some awesome features for bicycles. Before entering, cyclists were supposed to press a button, which activated a light above the tunnel.
We love Oregon.
On the other side of the tunnel we had our last downhill of the trip. Unfortunately, it was marred by construction. We had to wait some time for our turn to go.
At the bottom of the hill was Mapleton, where we stopped, once again, for coffee at the Mapleton Caffeination Station. We had awesome frozen coffees before dragging ourselves onward, in an effort to arrive at the beach at sundown. I made friends outside with a very thirsty dog.
From Mapleton we had a very flat ride along the Siuslaw River. There was some road construction, but a lot of it seemed to be for widening the road and adding shoulders - we can't complain about that.
It wasn't nearly as bright as we'd expected when we got close to Florence. We were going to have to move pretty quick to make the beach by sundown. Jillian's parents met us, to tell us that our original beach location wasn't actually a beach. Instead, they'd found us an alternate beach where we could actually wheel the bikes into the water. We weren't sure how to get there, so her parents leapfrogged us, playing human signpost.
They were pretty excited about our finishing, and that really helped us keep pushing.
We pulled into the Oregon Sand Dunes Recreation area, and found her parents car. There we rapidly put on every article of clothing we could easily find. It was very, very windy.
In order to reach the beach we had to climb over the top of a dune (note to others: if you keep going down the road, you can completely avoid having to climb the dune). It took some effort, but we carried the bike to the top.
There is no real way to describe the feeling of seeing that beach for the first time. Two months of riding. Almost quitting in Maryland, Indiana, and Denver. Outrunning dogs. Breaking down and being rescued by strangers and friends in Idaho, Kansas and Ohio. Going to bed hungry because we couldn't find any food. Freezing in the Oregon during crazy night time descents. Freezing and purple feet in Laramie. Tears. All over in one instant.
The way we'd ridden through Florece we hadn't even seen the water. Our first glimpse came as we crested that dune. We were a little awkward going down.
Our first task was to officially finish - we had to dip the wheel in the ocean, as we had back in New Jersey. We raced down and lifted the bike high above our heads in triumph.
Our second task was to start making phone calls, while we waited thirty minutes for the sun to start dipping down. I called my parents, thanking them for all the weather reports they'd given us, and letting them know they didn't need to worry any more. I called the Staphs, who we missed meeting in Wyoming by a day. I called Pickle, who had lent us her house in Denver. I called Jester, who had originally planned to ride from Boise to Florence with us. I reassured him that he'd made the right decision not coming. We'd changed our plans so many times that the route we wound up doing was nothing like what we'd originally planned on. Jester wouldn't have had any fun at all.
The calls were made extra difficult by the wind, which swept our tracks clean moments after walking on them. We had to spend most of our time facing south, to avoid sand in our eyes. Mostly it was nice to just sit, and not move. I was cold, but didn't care too much. We were done.
Today was the first day I missed the kick stand.
Finally the sun went down, and we hoisted the bicycle above our heads one last time.
Pictures taken, it was time to pack up our gear and find some dinner. We didn't have a bike rack, so we had to carefully disassemble the bike in order to fit in the back of the car. Our apologies to the rental company - it was a little sandy.
We drove back to Eugene, covering a day's worth of distance in a little over an hour. Her parents took us out to the Steelhead Brewery for dinner.
Then it was on to Portland, where we stayed with some of Jillian's extended family. We arrived a little late for a welcome party, but they left us a little something.
We didn't have a chance to enjoy it - we were simply too tired. We took showers, enjoyed the view of the city from the back deck, and crashed into bed.
| posted at: 04:05 |
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Sunday, August 16, 2009
Today was going to be an extra good day. Our first stop of the day would be in Sisters, where we were going to meet Jillian's parents and give them our trailer. Then, almost seventy pounds lighter, we'd tackle the last real pass of the trip and head into the Willamette valley. As an extra bonus, we'd get an almost 5000 foot downhill from the top of the pass to Eugene.
Our first real stop may have been in Sisters, but we decided to stop at the grocery store down the street first. Motel 6's are cheap, but don't provide much in the way of a free breakfast in the morning. While I was feeling a little sick - likely from too much Mexican food - that didn't stop me from my usual donuts and doubleshots at Safeway.
The view on the way from Redmond to Sisters was fantastic.
I best remember one steep, though short climb, which just about killed me because I wasn't feeling well. I wasn't more than 200 feet, but the combination of Mexican food and heat was enough to slow me down.
Jillian's parents beat us to Sisters, and rather than hang out and wait they thought they'd drive east and find us. They found us about three miles away - though we had some trouble finding them, since we were waiting in a parking lot and they were driving a rental. But they took our trailer and left to find parking somewhere in town, which made the bike a lot lighter.
We met them just inside Sisters, which was accurately described by Jillian's mother as a town from the shore, but without the shore. We ate at a cute cafe. It's hard to describe how hungry you get a bike tour. Some of the people we'd talked to that had toured said we'd likely finish and spend a month just eating and drinking, trying to get the body caught up.
We couldn't stay long with Jillian's parents, since we'd arrived in Sisters much later than we'd originally wanted. We left them there to explore the town while we pressed on for McKenzie pass.
We didn't start very intimidated.
The road was flat for a long time. But it was a tree lined, so we were able to ride in the shade, which was incredibly important. We also felt like we were flying, with our unusually light bicycle. One other awesome thing about this pass: No trucks or RVs. The road simply isn't wide enough, particularly on turns.
As we raced to the top, we realized we were making great time. We also hadn't seen Jillian's parents yet. So we did the competitive thing and decided to race them. We only made one brief stop for Jillian's foot pain and to swap out water bottles.
Imagine our surprise when we literally came around a bend and saw this:
There's a 65 square mile lava field on top of the pass. We had no idea it was going to be there, and no idea we'd be riding through it.
We arrived at the top of the pass only minutes before Jillian's parents did, meaning we'd won. To celebrate our victory, they'd brought us Subway and fresh Powerade!
We took some time to explore the observatory.
Then it was time for our long awaited downhill. The top of the pass is at 5325 feet. Eugene, our goal, is at 430 feet. That's 4895 feet of vertical drop. I could hardly contain my excitement.
Of course, we were moving slow. While riding on a little downhill I noticed that if we coasted we'd come to a stop. I got really, really frustrated. Our last big hill of the entire trip, and we're having brake problems? This was just like the tire rub way back outside of Bedford, PA.
When we first sat down to work on the bike, I tried just spinning the wheel to see if there was a problem. Without any weight on the wheel, it would stop very quickly. I did what I could, using our chain check tool to pry apart the brake pads and then getting Jillian to balance the bike so that we could lower it down and align the pads perfectly. Finally, with our brake problem mostly fixed, we got going again.
This time, the descent was wonderful. It was a long series of shaded switchbacks, with almost no traffic. We were able to take advantage of both lanes while we descended for the next sixteen miles. Watching the trees was fun, too. The further down we went, the higher the trees got.
At the bottom of the descent, we found Jillian's parents chatting with some motorcyclists at a little parking area. They were rather concerned, since we'd taken a while to come down the hill and there'd been an accident at the top while we were descending. Apparently someone had backed out of a parking space near the observatory and backed right in to someone. Her parents were, understandably, a little worried when they started hearing sirens.
Her parents departed and went to Eugene to watch a baseball game while we rode along the McKenzie River.
This was some wonderful riding. Wide shoulder, slightly downhill, and no wind. There were even other cyclists. To keep things interesting, we decided to pretend we were a pirate ship and needed to catch the other ships in order to raid their stuff. We caught two, but didn't raid anything.
A few miles down we stopped at a little general store and had some ice cream. There's something about reaching the end of your tour that makes you feel kind of lazy - or like you don't want to finish.
This road was extra awesome, as it had something wonderful: bathrooms every few miles. Then we spotted this sign:
We knew the one sign was for fishing, and another was for picnics, but what was the last one? Jillian decided it must be for dolphin riding (We think it was actually for a fish hatchery). Dolphin riding, downhills, shoulders, and bathrooms? Oregon was our bicycling fantasy. Jillian even wrote a song titled, "Oregon, you're our bicycling fantasy"
On our way down the road, we called two cyclists who also owned a Pino. Aaron and Laura Beese also owned a Pino, and had spent almost two years riding to the geographic centers of 46 of the 50 states (I wasn't able to find their website to link to). They'd promised to host us in Eugene. But we'd kind of forgotten to call them until we were only a few hours out of Eugene, and we weren't able to get in touch with them.
It started getting late, again. Jillian's parents called us up, wondering when in the world we were going to arrive in Eugene. We didn't really have an answer. They drove out to meet us and give us our stuff back. But when they met us, we convinced them to find us a hotel room and drop our stuff off there. They also let us know about a TV reporter they'd met, and who was interested in meeting with us in the morning. After giving her parents a bit more stuff, they drove off. Aaron and Laura called us back, but we now already had a place to stay. We agreed to meet them in the morning.
By now, it was quite dark. But this was Oregon. We didn't care. There were wide bike lanes, and plentiful lighting. Our real problem was staying on the right road. We were even stopped by some cops, who just wanted to tell us how awesome our bike was. We ended up at a Day's Inn, which was almost brand new. We wheeled our stuff down to our room - meeting Jillian's parents in the parking lot and thanking them over and over. Then it was time for some dinner.
We got some pizza at a place nearly next door. It was a little slow, but then it was after ten.
Today ended up being an amazing day. We powered over the pass, had an amazing descent, had an awesome ride along the McKenzie and wound up with warm food after it was dark for once.
| posted at: 04:05 |
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Saturday, August 15, 2009
Today started with some awesome muffins, but since we hadn't had dinner the night before our first priority, once again, was to find some breakfast. We packed the muffins for later and went across the street to a saloon.
Food was awesome. We also noticed a sign up for the local school - Mitchell School District #55. People apparently have to travel so far to get to the school that the school is actually a boarding school, with room for twenty boarders. That's pretty impressive for a guy who works at a school with 141,000 kids.
Across the street from the saloon there may or may not have been a man with a bear as a pet. Apparently he'd raised it from a cub, when it had been abandoned. We didn't take time to find out though.
Mitchell had a certain appeal though. It wasn't much of a town, but everything around it was beautiful, and the town seemed to have some spirit. We went back to the hotel to get our stuff together, finally getting a chance to talk with the owner of the hotel.
For perhaps the first time all trip today started with a downhill. Not much of one, and it was of course followed with a long, hot uphill, but we'll take what we can get. One fortunate thing for us is that our only climb was going to be in the morning. Once we were over it we'd be back into relatively populated west-central Oregon.
At the base of the climb the terrain was hilly and dry. Back in Mitchell, some 5 miles earlier and 400 feet higher up, it'd been kind of chilly, and we were wearing our jackets.
Now that we were climbing, we rapidly stopped and stripped off all our cold weather gear. I was amazed at how rapidly the temperature changed.
This climb, perhaps because it was still daylight, was pretty awesome. About 6 miles into the climb, we were passed by a classic car parade.
Midway up the climb, the terrain switched to forest, which was a nice change.
Toward the top of the climb, Steve, who we'd met in Dayville the day before, passed us.
He was moving a lot faster than we were.
Finally, we crossed Ochoco pass, and were able to start racing down hill. Well, kind of. Something didn't feel right to me, which was frustrating. After hours of struggling up a hill you want to treasure those few minutes going downhill. It almost felt like the brake was on. We pulled over at a little rest stop.
What we really wanted was a place to drop off some trash and get some water, but all we found were bathrooms. As we were studying the ACA maps, trying to determine how far it was to the next gas station, another touring cyclist pulled up. This cyclist was named Ben. He'd just finished University, and was spending his summer touring the country. We took off a little before him.
Of course, he passed us in no time at all, in large part due to our weird problem with the back tire that kept slowing us down.
This downhill wasn't nearly as much fun as we'd hoped. It wasn't even that long. But we did keep leapfrogging Ben, who had quite a few tire problems, flatting at least twice. Each time though, he never seemed to need any help, so we just kept riding on.
At mile 38, we reached Ochoco Reservoir.
Two miles later was the State Park. Right across from it was a gas station where we were able to stop and have lots to drink (and maybe eat ice cream). We stayed there longer than we should have, partly waiting to see if Ben was going to make it. But we ran out of time, and couldn't wait any longer.
A few miles later, we came to Prineville. For some reason, I got really silly, and started reading out PRINEville in a really shrill voice every time I saw a sign that said the town's name. In Prineville we stopped at McDonalds and considered our options.
I hadn't been sure how long it was going to take us to climb the Ochoco pass, and we'd originally wanted to spend a night in Sisters, so I'd researched some hotels in both Prineville and Redmond. Since it was only early afternoon, we decided to ride on. Of course, that meant we had two other options. We could either follow OR-126 or OR-370. 126 looked more direct, but 370 looked lot it had a lot less traffic. Since 370 was recommended by the ACA we, for once, took the more scenic route.
We rode around a low, long plateau for about a dozen miles.
While we were riding along flat farmland Ben caught up. Apparently he'd had more tire problems than expected even after he saw us and ended up having to wait for someone to drive in to Prineville and pick up some tubes for him. Friendly strangers are awesome.
Ben had some other tricks to show us. Apparently he sometimes took advantage of his British accent and stood outside grocery stores as it was getting dark. People would strike up conversation with him and the next thing he knew he was following them home to a meal and a bed. Unfortunately, we are rather short British Accents.
Before we got to US-97 we ran into Steve, who'd been camping on and off with Ben for a few days. Tonight Ben wanted to be on his own. We left him at what we thought was public land, where he was going to try some stealth camping. We left him with a card and our phone number, in case the camping didn't work out and he wanted to share a hotel room with us.
For once, we arrived in Redmond before the sun was down. We tried a couple of hotels in town, looking for one that had the most magical of all things - laundry. No luck. We ended up riding out to a Motel 6 outside of town, and arriving as it got dark. So much for getting in early enough to walk around a bit. There was quite a line at the desk of the Motel 6, but the staff was incredibly friendly and we chatted with a lot of fun people in the lobby. Dinner was at an awesome Mexican place across the street. It was almost celebratory and I was in great spirits. Jillian's parents were in Oregon - we'd no longer need to worry about getting stranded. If we had another night where we might get in at 3am, we'd be able to call for a rescue. Provided, of course, that we weren't stuck in an area without any cell reception like we'd been last night.
Back at the hotel, I was still in a silly mood and hulu-hooped with bike tires.
I wasn't very good at it.
| posted at: 04:04 |
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Friday, August 14, 2009
After getting in very late the previous night, we weren't really in good shape to get moving this morning. In fact, we weren't in great shape to move at all. First mission: breakfast. Across the street was a little diner. We downed a ridiculous amount of food, then were really slow packing up our stuff. We didn't get out of there until 11.
A couple miles out of John Day, Jillian started feeling very sick. We stopped at Clyde Holliday State Park to rest a while. We chatted for a while with some motorcyclists who were touring about the Northwest. I only felt a little envious of their motors. We also spotted a sign warning us about Cougars in the area. So I thought maybe I should fill Jillian in on the green eyes from the night before.
She wasn't terribly happy.
After the park, we rode on to the little town of Mt Vernon, and stopped at a gas station for some snacks. We stayed a lot longer than we should have, but again, we just weren't moving very quickly.
It was going to be almost twenty miles to the next town, and largely downhill. But then, we weren't feeling well. And we hurt. They became twenty very, very painful miles.
In Dayville, we came to a little park and stopped to use the bathroom and chatted with Steve, another touring cyclist. He said there was no way we were going to make Mitchell tonight. We explained that we didn't have a choice - we already had reservations at the only - and very small - hotel in Mitchell. Plus we needed to keep moving - we were rapidly running out of time before we had to meet Jillian's parents. In fact, we were planning to meet them at Sisters in two days.
In Dayville we glanced at the clock and realized that if we pushed really hard we might be able to make it to the John Day fossil beds to see the fossils. We started pushing hard.
As we got close, we passed through an awesome gorge.
We spotted a sign just inside the gorge that said we had 2 miles to go - and only 10 minutes until it was 4pm and the fossil center closed. Jillian broke down, but kept pushing. We both rode maybe harder than we ever had. It was such a simple thing - just a fossil center. But it was a huge mental goal for us.
We arrived right at 4 - to find a sign saying they were open until 5:30. Infuriating. We took time to explore the fossil beds and sit on a bench a while.
I was a little sad there were no dinosaurs here.
We sat around outside for a while, chatting with some fellow tourists who were amused by our bicycle. Finally it was time to get back on the road.
Mitchell was about 30 miles away. It wasn't much later than 5. We had a solid 4 hours to cover 30 miles. No problem, seeing as we'd just covered 2 miles in 10 minutes.
We knew there was another pass, we just didn't realize that this pass was almost 30 miles long. Long passes are worse than short ones, regardless of the height. At least at the start there were things to look at.
A couple of miles on, we met those same tourists from earlier. They'd driven all the way back to Dayville to buy us some dinner and something to drink. I love people that love cyclists.
We climbed, and climbed, and climbed, stopping in vain where we thought we might find a cell signal and trying to call the hotel to let them know we were going to be in a little late. We were finally able to get a text message through to Jillian's mother - we thought.
We saw a funny tree. We know nothing at all about it, but most cyclists seem to take pictures with it.
Just down the road from the shoe tree we spotted a cow on the side of the road. Cows normally seem kind of dumb and docile. This one seemed two steps from charging us.
Around mile 57, the pass started to flatten out and we were able to pick up the speed a little. Of course, it was pitch black and we were once again riding by headlamp. But by now one of our lights was dead. We operate on a system of three lights. I wear a focused headlamp
, which I use to look for road hazards. Jillian wears a broad headlamp
, as a light for others to see and to keep light on things nearby. We also have a little light on the end of the bicycle's boom. It doesn't really provide us with any light on the road as it points straight ahead, but cars can see it easily.
Somewhere on the long, flat top of the pass the end of the boom headlamp decided to die. We debated accepting a ride, if someone was to offer one, without coming to any real conclusions. Then the temperature started to drop, and we got miserable. Some distance off into a field, I spotted another set of green eyes. Nowhere near as close as the last ones, but still a little nerve racking. No idea if this one was a cougar.
Finally, after almost ten miles of an extra slow, not too steep climb, we crested the top. The downhill was fast. Really, really fast. We were stuck. We could either go five or six miles an hour and not be cold, or we could go forty and get down the hill in an instant. We wound up having to compromise a little. We went as fast as we felt safe - which was still freezing.
We spotted the sign for the hotel first, and it was the most beautiful thing we'd ever seen. It felt like it was three in the morning, even though it was only a little after ten. Although we were exhausted, we took some time to chat without the people outside and lock the bike up to the fence outside. Inside we found a note from the owner - Jillian's mother had called, our key was attached to the note, and we could take care of payment in the morning.
The Oregon Hotel was an older building, and the decor was lots of fun. We'd paid a little extra to get a private room. Inside we found a problem - the room only had a bathtub, no shower. As it was now quarter of eleven, we weren't really in the mood to draw two baths. But then, we didn't really have any clean clothing for tomorrow anyway, and we certainly weren't going to find any laundry here. So much for getting clean tonight.
Although the note in the lobby had promised us muffins in the morning, there was nothing to be had for dinner. We choked down the remainder of the granola bars from the friendly tourists we'd met at the fossil beds. They were extra tasty, since they weren't our normal ones, even if they were a little high in fiber.
| posted at: 04:04 |
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Thursday, August 13, 2009
Today was one of the days we'd been worried about for a while. We'd first started talking seriously about it in Nampa. It was nearly 115 miles from Vale to John Day, which seemed to have the most hotels. There was nothing in between. We started very early.
We also started with a stop at a gas station for breakfast. I thought we were fortunate just to have something open. We headed North out of town, following US-26. There wasn't much to see aside from a headwind, blowing down off the passes ahead.
A few miles in we came to Willow Creek, where we found a general store. Jillian really wanted to use a bathroom, but the store wasn't going to open for another half hour. I stayed with the bike while Jillian went across the street to the Willow Creek School, where the secretary was kind enough to let her use the bathroom.
We tried to stop again in Jamison, specifically to see if the Post Office people would unlock their port-a-potty for us, but the building was rather closed.
Then we rode on to Brogan, all in a punishing headwind. We stopped there at a store - apparently the last one for the next forty miles. We had some more to eat, in addition to checking out their Rattlesnake Contest:
We also met a cyclist on a recumbent who was heading from Portland to Boise. Specifically, he said there was "No way at all [we] are going to make it all the way to John Day." Unfortunate, because we had a hotel reservation and no backup plan.
Out of Brogan we had our first climb of the day, to almost 4000 feet.
There was no downhill on the top of Brogan - just miles and miles of flat, high desert. Nothing to keep us away from the headwind.
We did pass one more important sign though:
Then it was time for another climb, this time to only about 4400 feet. We were, curiously enough, in some sort of preserved forest land.
Next stop was in Unity, which was the little store the woman in Brogan had been referring to. There wasn't much here, and the clerk, noting that by now it was late in the afternoon, suggested we camp. There was a hotel, but it wasn't much, and neither of us wanted to spend the night there only to face more nothingness the next day. Outside the store was a sign charging people extra money to use the store outside normal business hours, which I found amusing. After having more to eat and drink we got back on the road, with a renewed mission of making it as far as possible before dark.
Then it was time for Blue Mountain Pass, at just over 5000 feet. It was a long, long climb. But at least we were out of the desert.
One advantage of Forest lands is the regular campgrounds. They were all empty, but it meant bathrooms we could use. It was getting cold, and the bathrooms were pretty large. Neither of us much cared of the idea of another 60 miles - as many miles as we'd done the day before - in the dark. I seriously considered just setting up our emergency shelter in the bathroom. We decided not to though, not sure of how cold it was going to get.
Not too far out past the campgrounds I spotted some bright green eyes on the side of the road. They were both forward facing, not opposite each other like you'd expect on deer. Furthermore, when they moved, they moved perfectly level to the ground, not bouncing up and down like a deer's. I kept my headlight on them for a while, and Jillian and I kept up very loud conversation, and they slid off into the woods. Jillian wondered why I was pedaling a lot harder than normal, but didn't question it too much. I didn't tell her about the eyes at all.
After we crested the hill we absolutely froze on the downhill. Jillian, as the wind break, had it a lot worse than me. But as I shivered the whole bike would shake. Not much we could do though - the downhills were our only chance to move more than six or seven miles an hour.
At the bottom of this pass was Austin Junction. I'd been hoping for a little 24 hour store or something there, but all we found was a closed store and DOT site. We stayed outside the DOT site, with its lights, and tried to warm up a little bit. But it was rather eerie, and our recent encounter with green eyes had left me a little jumpy. The shooting stars were fantastic, but we got back on the road quickly.
We had one more pass to climb before we'd be able to ride down into the valley and follow a stream to John Day. This pass was just over 5200 feet high, making it our longest climb. It was after 11 when we came to a construction site.
Construction sites are mixed blessings - sometimes they're awful, because the road is bad. Sometimes they're nice, because they slow traffic down and sometimes you can ride in closed lanes. But mostly they're good, because there's port-a-pottys. This one was no exception, and we stopped to use their port-a-potty. Jillian went first, but when she got near the door she turned to me and said "I think there's someone in there."
Ha. Funny, Jillian. We're 30 miles from the nearest house and you think there's someone using a port-a-potty in the middle of the woods?
"I heard a noise! It's shaking!"
Then a man walked out of the port-a-potty. Apparently it was his job to babysit the job site all night, to make sure the traffic signal was still working right. He gave us some cokes, which we gladly took.
Not too long after we crested the pass and had a marvelous downhill back toward civilization. Well, would have been marvelous if it hadn't been so cold. I couldn't stop shaking the entire way down. But the site of city lights in the distance was promising. We rode downhill nearly nine miles to Prairie City, where we'd originally considered spending the night. I was glad we'd changed our minds though. We would have been arriving at a B&B at after midnight, long after everyone had gone to bed.
The ride to John Day was uneventful, with nearly empty roads with beautiful stars overhead.
Finally arriving in John Day, we pulled in to an America's Best Value Inn. There was a sign, saying to ring a bell if you were a late check-in. As it was nearly 1 in the morning, we most certainly were a late check-in. We rang the bell, tried the phones, etc for a half hour. Finally a very sleepy looking woman appeared and very apologetically checked us in. She even gave us an extra day free.
Now in our rooms, we had to find some food. There was nothing open, of course, so we were once again stuck with the little snacks we had. It might not have been all bad, but the soda machine ate the first soda we tried to buy. Ultimately though, none of it mattered. We were so exhausted that food didn't really matter.
| posted at: 04:02 |
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Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Today, unfortunately, started with a flat.
Lucky for us this was a really slow flat. I was able to just inflate the tire and get us going again. But we'd have to watch it. We had two goals before we left Nampa - first we had to check out the awesome looking coffee garage we'd seen yesterday, and second we had to stop at Walmart and investigate a new tire for the trailer.
Finding the coffee garage wasn't too hard, and Nampa seemed to have a pretty awesome little downtown. The coffee garage was a converted garage, with all sorts of space for having coffee. I had yogurt with granola, Jillian had milk with granola, which was kind of like granola milk. I wound up finishing that one.
Back on the road, we headed west, to Walmart. The manager at the hotel had given us ridiculously awful directions. If she'd just said something like "Stay on 55 - it'll be on your left' we'd have been happy. Instead there was all this discussion about which Walmart and what not. Sigh.
The ride down ID-55 was pretty awful. No much of a shoulder, lots of traffic, lots of lights. We ended up on the sidewalk here and there. When we did reach the Walmart I bought some supplies and spent forever returning some tires that we didn't need anymore.
After a stop at a Wendy's in Caldwell, we got on US-26 and followed that west out of town. We finally saw a sign we were going to the right way:
That's Ontario, Oregon, not Ontario, Ontario.
US-26 was a pretty relaxed ride, without high winds and without the temperature being too awful (or maybe we were just acclimated?). We passed through the little town of Notus, before arriving in Parma, which might be the yellow onion capital of the country. There we stopped at Apple Lucy, chatted with patrons and had a wonderful lunch of hamburgers and milkshakes.
Eventually we were able to drag ourselves away from air conditioning and milkshakes and get back on the road to Oregon. Tonight we'd be staying at the Bates Motel in Vale, Oregon. As a small, Mom & Pop hotel, we needed to get there before they closed for the night.
Out of Parma we turned North, heading through vast fields and watching Onion trucks roll by. If we looked to our West, we could easily see Oregon across the valley. When we did cross the river, we entered the town of Nyssa, the Thunderegg Capital of the world. We weren't entirely sure what a Thunderegg was, but we did take some pictures of our entering our final state.
There was some tricky construction to navigate in order to get through Nyssa, but we decided we were due for a stop there and we gladly stopped at the Thunderegg Coffee Company.
Inside the owners informed us that a Thunderegg is a round rock with a geode in it. They were even kind enough to give us one to take home. We stayed all together too long here, having fruit smoothies. We also enjoyed the XKCD comics plastered on all the walls.
Having spent most of the day enjoying delicious frozen drinks, we realized that we should probably get on the road if we wanted any hope of making it to Vale before close. We got back on the road.
We followed US-26 West, and caught wonderful views of Malheur Butte (Malheur means misfortune in French). It was pretty easy to spot.
Apparently it's an extinct volcano, which is pretty awesome.
Eventually we came to an overlook.
I also leaned that the county we were in - population 31,000 - is 9900 square miles big. According to the sign, and since checked on Wikipedia, that's approximately the size of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Deleware put together.
We arrived in Vale at about 8 - before sunset for once.
Most impressively, Vale has bike lanes everywhere. Vale's a little town - about 2000 people - but there were arguably more miles of bike lanes than there are back in Frederick, population 60,000. First we found our way to the hotel.
We were a little hesitant to stay here, but the reviews on TripAdvisor were awesome. We shouldn't have worried. Except about the decor.
The couch felt a bit like cardboard, too. But we were glad to have a room - if we hadn't made a reservation that morning, we wouldn't have been able to get a room at all. After exploring the town and shooting photos of the murals, we got dinner at the Starlite Cafe, which had really excellent food. Take our reviews of food with a grain of salt - we're always starving - but this did feel like a home cooked meal with friends, even though we didn't know anyone there.
Back at the Bates Motel, we took a little bit of time to get our gear in order before showering in the original all tile showers. Like any older hotel, the shower heads are about four inches too short for me, and I had to crouch the entire time. Good rate through.
| posted at: 04:02 |
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Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Today started - at 5:30am - with Joann making us a wonderful breakfast of pancakes, orange juice, and fresh fruit. If only we could have a morning like that every morning. She also sent us off with an entire cantaloupe. Heavy, but delicious.
Riding through Hammett wasn't so bad - there was certainly more of a town than I'd been able to spot from the bridge. West of Hammett we found bugs. Lots of bugs. And it was already hot. In order to stay ahead of the bugs we had to travel more than 12 mph - which just wasn't going to happen climbing back out of the valley.
There really wasn't much to see beyond hay bales until we got to Mountain Home. I'll spare you pictures.
We stopped at the Albertsons, had some donuts (well, I did), then stopped again at the bike shop to buy spare back tubes and a new back tire (as a spare - can't be too careful). This meant we were now carrying two back tires - the slightly wrong sized one we'd been forced to purchase at Walmart back in Jerome and the new, right sized one. We stopped again at a gas station near the interstate north of town. It was very, very hot. Jillian, as always, was probably ready to take the highway, but I wanted to follow the frontage road, since I hate riding the interstate.
We followed the frontage road. According to the Garmin we'd be able to stay south of the highway the entire way. Google Maps thought the road would end. The road did abruptly dead end - causing us to travel an extra two miles. Plus we found a whole bunch of dogs, which took some effort to get away from. I hopped back on the Garmin and found us an alternate route. The road names in this area were a little funny.
The other road names were even weirder - all about beaches and oceans, even though we were hundreds of miles from the coast.
We did pass one development, complete with private airport. I'm not sure who would want to live out here.
Now that it was easily 100 degrees (remember that we'd been wearing gloves two days earlier) we were desperate for any stop. Imagine our relief when we spotted the Sinclair.
We camped out at on some chairs outside and had our Cantaloupe.
We drank a lot of fluid. We bought a root beer for Jillian, Hi-C for me, Powerade, and lots of water. It was almost disturbing how much water we'd had. We took some time to just sit as well, glad to not be in the sun.
When we did get back on the road, it was on the interstate. There were no alternate routes at this point, and we only had to travel one exit, getting off at Kuna. Not that Kuna was at the exit - we had a long way to go.
We'd had to make a decision about how we were going to get west of Boise. Our original plan had been to ride the highway another exit and get off to ride through Boise. Now that we were extra short time we wanted to skip Boise all together and ride around the traffic and stop lights. Kuna was our answer.
There are no photos from this section of the ride. There was nothing to see, except for some storm clouds to our south. We had to keep working in order to stay ahead of those.
When we did reach Kuna, almost twenty miles later, we found a Quiznos and had some dinner (and more drinks). I called home and got a weather report. Possible showers, but mostly clear if we kept moving. We got moving again - excited that there were only some fifteen miles left to our stop.
There again wasn't too much to see north of town. Things were greener, but mostly due to people living there and watering their lawns. We had an unnecessary climb over a rail road bridge, and then had some trouble finding the hotel. It was dark by now, and Jillian was navigating by way of the Garmin. That was hard, since the Garmin kills your night vision. Little did I know, but the Garmin was giving different street names from what was actually there. That was very frustrating, since here I thought Jillian couldn't even use a Garmin, when in reality the Garmin was all wrong.
We found a hotel, and though we didn't have a reservation we were fortunate in that the Super 8 Nampa had a first floor room available for us. We checked in and headed over to the Denny's to find some dinner (also, free refills on beverages). Service was good, though it took forever to get out of there and back to the hotel to sleep. We stopped and grabbed cookies at a gas station on our way back to the hotel, where we simply crashed, exhausted.
| posted at: 04:02 |
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Monday, August 10, 2009
Today's plan was to ride to Mountain Home, which would put us in a great position to get to Boise tomorrow with enough time to find a bike shop and maybe even explore a little bit. It wasn't to be.
We started with a stop at Ziggy's, where we'd found dinner the night before.
Then it was back on the road, following the old US-30 route. But we didn't travel far. Not even half a mile down the road we found a Post Office and stopped to mail some things back. Little did we know that the Post Office had an amazing view of the Snake River Canyon. Jillian went to shoot photos while I took care of the Post Office.
I managed to scrape together just over four pounds of stuff to mail, including receipts, our gloves, some chain lube, and the headset wrench.
Then we were back to riding through nothing at all.
This open road wasn't quite as bad as the previous one. We were going downhill.
We were riding down into the valley, where we'd be able to directly follow along the shores of the river. We love riding downstream along a river.
Of course, we were hardly at the bottom of the hill before we flatted, on the front tire.
We passed through the very little town of King Hill, which has a pretty awesome location on the Snake. Then we flatted again, this time on the trailer. At least there were nice things to look at.
Not long after we came into the town of Glenns Ferry. We stopped a little grocery store to buy some brunch. We also got Marzipan, which wound up being the most disgusting thing either of us had ever tried eating.
Back on the road, we stayed on old US-30, following the highway fairly closely. Then the front flatted, again. Every time we were getting hit by goatheads, which seemed to be all over.
Not long after, we flatted again. This time outside of an RV Park.
But this time the patch wouldn't hold. We flatted as soon as we tried to put the tire back on the bike. We walked it, flat tire and all, about a quarter mile back so that we could hide in the shade in an underpass below the interstate.
By now we were completely out of spare tubes for the front - and we'd started with three. One had a bad valve. The other two looked like this:
The red patches came from our original patch kit. The green ones are from the Walmart patch kit. They simply wouldn't hold, no matter how long we held them in place, or how well we cleaned and scratched the hole. We were stuck.
By now it was about one in the afternoon, and hot. I was, once again, so frustrated with our equipment. I decided to walk down the road to the bridge over the train tracks to see if I saw anything that resembled a town. Jillian would stay in the shade and start calling everyone under the sun to see if she could procure us a way to a bike shop.
It couldn't have been more than a half mile to the bridge, but the heat was killer. My sandals were getting stuck in sticky road tar, melting under the heat. I didn't see anything, but the walk helped to calm me down.
Jillian hadn't had any luck. No matter how much money we promised no one seemed to have a vehicle that could pick us up. We had two plans. At 6:30 the owner of a bike shop in Mountain Home could drive down and bring us parts, or we could call my friend Kate's friend Jeremy - but he lived way back in Pocatello, and it would take him a long time to travel way out here to help us. We decided to wait it out until 6:30 - over three hours away.
If there was ever a time that I wanted to be done touring, it was today. I hate equipment problems, especially when I've done everything I can to be ready for them and things still go wrong. We hadn't seen a proper bike shop since Laramie - the ones in Lander and Pocatello had been closed, and we hadn't seen them anywhere else. We probably should have taken a really short day to get things squared away, but we were simply out of time. We had to get to the coast in order to meet Jillian's parents, who had already bought their tickets.
Maybe a half hour later a little, a late 80s black BMW pulled up (cars only passed maybe once every thirty or forty minutes), rolled down their window, and said to us, "You're sitting in shit." Joann offered to let us wait under a tree in her backyard, just down the road. We thought that'd be great, so we explained our predicament. Joann said that she was headed in to Mountain Home anyway to pick some things up for her mother - so she'd gladly take us in to town to pick up the parts. Perfect! Maybe we could be back under way without having to do any makeup miles.
We stowed our bike at her place and she drove us to town, dropping us off at Tony's Bike shop.
Tony's didn't have a 20 inch presta valve tube, which isn't terribly surprising. It isn't the world's most common tube. They could drill the rim, so we could fit a schrader in there, but I wasn't enamored with that idea. I saw a slight chance of cracking the rim and grounding us for a few more days. Jillian spotted something amazing - a no flat inner tube
. It was simply a solid piece of rubber that you'd use instead of the tube. It wasn't a perfect solution though - this flatless tube simulated about 45psi - we were used to riding close to 100. They were also almost impossible to get off - we'd have to cut the tire off with a knife. But no flats. Ever. We bought it.
We met Joann back at the Albertsons, and she offered to make us dinner and give us a place to spend the night. How could we say no? Then when she offered to let us play tourist for the rest of the day, we were simply in heaven.
She took us to see the Idaho Sand Dunes, which are pretty awesome. There's a valley with high walls on both sides, causing passing air to carry dust and clay right over the valley, but to drop the heavier sand. These sand dunes were several hundred feet high, and still active - they moved around over the course of the year. Joann made sure that, just like all tourists, we pranced up them.
Next stop was one of Joann's friend's farms, where fresh cantaloupe could be found.
Sadly, her friend wasn't home. But that didn't stop us from raiding the outside fridge and taking a couple.
Back at Joann's, we called home, had showers, and fixed the bike up in the comfort of a shaded patio. Joann also picked up her mother and brought her back. Her mother had survived the Dresden firebombings, walking out of the city afterward as a young teenager. She had a lot of interesting stories. We also put her up on our bicycle for pictures.
Joann made us a wonderful dinner and filled us full of alcohol for the ride the next day. We even got to sleep in a real, comfortable bed.
| posted at: 04:02 |
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Sunday, August 09, 2009
As much as I don't care for riding on the Interstate, today we were going to be left without any other options. West of Heyburn I-84 rapidly becomes the only paved road straight west we can easily find. Jillian talked me into getting on the Interstate right away, rather than waiting a while. I did my best to procrastinate at breakfast. As much as everything I'd ever read had said it was ok to ride the interstate, I'd never seen anything official. I simply couldn't believe that it was legal for cyclists to ride the Interstate.
I shouldn't have worried so much about the interstate. While it was really boring, and we couldn't talk at all, it was only 8 miles until there was a good frontage road that we could use. No traffic, not too hilly, not too hot or windy yet. We took advantage.
About 15 miles in, we crossed the highway at an exit and stopped at a convenience store. There wasn't much here, but we had cold drinks. On our way out of the convenience store, we found a young mother with a bit of a tire problem. Her tire was bulging quite a bit, and she needed to put on the spare. We gave her a hand.
Unfortunately, I couldn't get one of the nuts off the tire, no matter how much weight I put on it. I even tried rigging up a longer handle to get better leverage. No luck. The woman we were helping asked the driver of the next truck down for a hand. He had a real tire iron, which got the nut off right away, but before he could help he had to help his kid, who was throwing up off the tailgate of his truck.
Tire changed, the woman drove off and we were able to get moving again, feeling full of good karma, even if we were still a little worried that the spare tire was kind of low on air (there was no pump at this convenience store).
There wasn't a whole lot to see in this part of Idaho.
Our next stop came at a place called Anderson Camp. It was simply a campground with a little cafe. It was quirky. We had lunch here - salads and tater tots. Most importantly, I also had some Mexican Coke - Coke made with real sugar instead of corn syrup. It was wonderful, leaving no aftertaste. All of the tables at the Anderson Camp had these awful books
which we tried to read, but couldn't. Then it was back on the road, still avoiding the Interstate.
About 40 miles in, just outside the town of Jerome, we flatted on the front. I really didn't want to change the tire on the shoulder, and we were quite close to the exit, so we walked the bike off the highway.
At the top of the ramp was a Wendy's, where we got very wonderful Frosties before changing the tire. I was not happy about having to change the tire.
As long as we were off the highway, I thought maybe we could stop in at the police station and inquire about riding on the Interstate. But the state Police barracks was closed - it was a Sunday. Fortunately, just down the street we spotted a sheriff filling up his car and took the opportunity to ask him. He confirmed that it was completely legal, so we decided to ride to the far side of town and get back on the highway.
Just before the ramp to get back on the highway I noticed problems with our back tire. The same boot we'd put on our tire way back in Wyoming was still there, and now it was making the bike bounce a bit and causing a bulge of our own. We stopped at another gas station, and took a look.
No luck. We needed a new patch kit and we needed new tires. We did some searching to find a bike shop, but there wasn't one in town. The only option was the Walmart - back by the first exit to town. We called ahead, and they said they had some tires that were close. Close probably wasn't close enough, but they were our only option and by now it was getting to be dinner time. We needed to get moving if we were going to make it to Bliss.
Indeed, the tires at Walmart were close - but not perfect. But, as always, we were out of options. I bought them anyway, as well as a patch kit. In another two days we'd be in Boise, where we could surely find a shop to supply us with all the things we needed.
So now, a day which started with us hopefully establishing some good Karma was on its way to ending terribly. I was so very, incredibly frustrated. I love riding bikes - I hate fixing them. I did what I could with the tires and we got back on the road, choosing to ride slower than normal until we knew how well the boot on the tire was holding.
A few miles later, we started raising our speed, eventually averaging 17-20mph. Our plan was to make it to Wendell, where we'd get off the Highway and follow US-30 in to Bliss in order to keep off the Interstate when it was dark. But after a very brief conversation we decided to stay on the highway - it was only 7 miles, and there might be no shoulder on 30.
Jillian kept her headlamp moving side to side, scanning for road hazards. I did my best to avoid them, but at the speeds we were going in the dark, it was almost impossible.
Only a few miles out of town is Malad Gorge State Park, and I was kind of upset that we weren't going to be able to stop. Today was supposed to have been a fairly easy day, if we hadn't had tire troubles we would have had plenty of time to stop for pictures.
But, so much as we'd had an awful day, the Amber Inn in Bliss was wonderful. Small, inexpensive, with huge rooms. But most importantly there was a 24 hour diner nearly across the street. We had a tremendous amount of food, which nearly made everything ok, and we were able to forget the awful part of the day before going to bed.
| posted at: 03:27 |
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Saturday, August 08, 2009
Today was cold when we woke up. We spent some time wandering about the hotel, dragging out feet at getting moving and hoping it would warm up, but without much luck. About twenty miles away was the little town of American Falls, where I'd wanted to end up before we had to do makeup miles the day before. We'd reevalutate the weather when we got there.
We did notice quite a few cyclists outside, apparently attending an event at the University, but we didn't have the time to join them.
We started by riding up US-30 back toward the interstate - the same road we'd followed out of Jillian's parents house back in Pennsylvania. The roads were, thankfully, empty, perhaps due to the early hour.
Of course, we did make sure to stop at a gas station on our way out of town to get some coffee. My addiction to Starbucks Starbucks Doubleshot Energy+Coffee
drinks was getting to be debilitating.
We passed a huge Simplot Factory west of town. Given the amount of sulfur moving into that place, I'd love to know what they do there.
We paralleled the highway for a while, stopping to chat with a car that wanted to check out our bike and get our story. After stopping at another gas station (you never know where the next stop might be), we took a picture of an amusing sign.
We started seeing some signs for construction. Usually we pay them close attention. But this one was telling us the road ahead was closed - maybe. The road names were a little confusing to us out of towners, and we weren't really sure. We eventually did arrive at a closed road - but only a closed bridge, over some train tracks. We could either cross the bridge anyway, or ride back a number of miles and use the highway. Since there was no construction actually happening at the time, and since equipment was parked on the top of the bridge, we rode right across the bridge. This construction zone also brought us another bonus: an unlocked port-a-potty on the far side.
After the bridge, the road moved away from the highway a bit and we spotted what appeared to be an elk farm. This was actually the closest we got to elk the entire trip.
Not much longer later we arrived in American Falls. Our route took us right past the hotel we'd considered staying at. Jillian didn't like the looks of it at all. Neither did I, but I felt like crap. Tired and cold. Very cold. We rode on to a Subway, where we stopped for some lunch.
I expected the hot food to make me feel better, but it had the opposite effect. I wanted nothing more in this world than to grab a room at a motel - any motel - and crash until the next morning. It was a long ride to the next real town - Burley. I wasn't sure I'd be able to do that, and if it rained I wasn't sure we'd be able to keep warm. Jillian agreed to let me make some phone calls about weather.
My father reported that the weather actually looked like it was going to be clearing up, and maybe even warming up some. How depressing that was. I'd really hoped he was going to tell me something terrible, like that it was going to snow. Before we went any further we took the bike to the Bingham Coop, where we bought some gloves. Never in a million years did I expect to be wearing what appeared to be surplus Army gloves in the middle of August. We got some food, eating it at a little table. I'm not sure either of us were actually that hungry, we just didn't want to venture out into the cold. Jillian also hunted in vain for warmer clothing. I may or may not have had another Starbucks Doubleshot
We finally did get moving, riding past the town festival on our way out of town. We followed little side roads as long as we could, but eventually we were forced onto the Interstate, which is completely legal in Idaho. Fortunately, this was a very short trip on the Interstate. Only a mile down the road was a rest area and history center.
Here, Idaho was pretty again.
From the rest area we were able to follow a paved hiking trail to Massacre Rocks State Park. Though the area was famous for a massacre on the Oregon Trail, I was mostly fascinated by the former waterfall. Apparently way back in the day there'd been a massive amount of water that flowed through the area all at once, cutting this notch in the cliff walls.
Past Massacre Rocks we were able to keep off the highway again. We followed a little road up a small hill, gaining a nice view of the valley below us before heading back across the highway to stop at Register Rock, where many Oregon Trail travelers carved their names.
We didn't stay long, as we had a long way to travel and there was some sort of family picnic going on.
Not long later we flatted, again, in the front.
Thankfully, it had finally started to warm up some and I wasn't quite as miserable.
This was actually a fairly nice area to ride, with mostly empty roads and kind drivers. After climbing another hill, we passed a state rest area. Of course, we had to stop, since we weren't sure how much further we had to go, but there was a fence in the way. We carefully positioned the bike and found a way to sneak through the fence and bushwack our way to the rest area. After that it was another series of miles of nothing.
Except then we turned away from the highway. I thought I knew what nothing was. I knew nothing about nothing.
In this nothing, there weren't even any telephone polls, let alone buildings. We rode for miles, rather concerned that we were so far from everything. But, just when we started to feel sorry for ourselves for not taking the highway, we noticed a massive storm cloud, but far to our south. If we'd stayed on the highway we would have likely been stuck riding through the storm cloud. Instead, we rode through nothing at all.
Our immediate goal was the town of Rupert, which was locally famed for its nice downtown. That little image kept me going through the miles of nothing. When we did finally reach civilization again, after crossing the Snake, I was ecstatic. Unfortunately, the sun started dipping below the horizon as we crossed the Snake River and moved into Rupert.
Rupert, with its gorgeous downtown, was no longer our goal. I kept us east of town, as we turned south and headed for Burley. We stopped briefly to use a gas station and take a bearing on the Garmin. Then we were back moving again, making great time without any wind and with the best temperatures we'd had all day. Bike touring is like that. Low and high spirits on the same day.
As we got closer to town, I realized we needed to be one exit further down on the highway. We had three options. We could either ride into the town of Heyburn, make a right, and travel down 21st street and deal with what I thought was a fairly busy commercial district. Or we could get on the Interstate and deal with riding in the dark. Or we could turn down 300 South Road. Numbered roads usually concern us a bit, since there's a good chance they might not be paved, but this one seemed like it might. Jillian was very opposed - she'd spent enough time in nowhere today, and wanted to stay a little closer to lights and people. I wanted to stay away from lights and people while it was dark. Ultimately, perhaps because I had the handlebars, we turned down the very rural road.
The road did turn out to be dark, and we weren't able to make great time. Jillian was nervous all the time, for good reason. There were just enough houses that people lived nearby, but not enough houses for people to chain their dogs up. Dog barks freaked us both out, since dogs are nearly impossible to see in the dark. We were also splashed by mist from some irrigation machine - we hoped it was only water and not water mixed with some sort of pesticides or fertilizer.
This actually wound up being a really terrible area of riding for us. We yelled at each other, with no real result. There was nothing left to do but move on. Our spirits soared when we saw the bright yellow sign of the Super 8.
After checking in, we tried to find some food. The gas station next to the motel said they sold pizza - but we were unimpressed. We grabbed some sodas and instead retreated to the hotel and ordered a pizza and breadsticks. Jillian was in terrible spirits by this point. But we devoured the food and found some sleep, happy with each other again.
| posted at: 03:21 |
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Friday, August 07, 2009
We started our day with a makeup miles. I hate makeup miles. You feel like you're not going anywhere at all, even though you're moving in the wrong direction. Since we'd spent the night at a Motel 6, there was no breakfast for us. Thinking that we only had seven or eight miles to ride until the gas station, I opted to wait for breakfast until our turn around point. We started the day by taking a look at the falls.
It wound up being 19 miles. Through construction. And dust.
When we arrived, we decided to spend the remainder of our lottery winnings on another ticket. We won, used it to buy another and finally lost. We took our time getting moving again. Even though we were going to finally be going the right direction again, the prospect of riding 19 more miles that should have been doe the day before wasn't very appealing. I grabbed something healthy - juice and multigrain bars. Then we got moving again.
Finally, we started feeling a little better. Only for it to start getting a little wet. We made fairly good time back to Idaho Falls though. We kept considering alternate routes to get away from the construction, but there weren't a lot of choices.
On the far side of Idaho Falls we stopped at a gas station, where we were asked for directions. We always find that a little curious.
The ride out of town wasn't very interesting. The shoulders were sufficient, traffic wasn't too heavy, there wasn't much to see. Typical Idaho.
Eventually we found our way to Blackfoot, where we found a wonderful site.
There wasn't a whole lot in Blackfoot. But there were clouds, and we were feeling kind of beat up. But when we called around we found all of the rooms were booked. Having wasted twenty minutes, we got back on the bike to try and rush to Pocatello.
Jillian started calling hotels while I was navigating, but the combination of the wind and our limited access to hotel listings made it hard. We tried the three or four hotels I'd originally identified back in Denver, but everything was booked. After a call to Jillian's mother and a plea to search for a room for us, we doubled our efforts to try and make Pocatello as quickly as possibe.
It turned out that we were trying to ride through the area right in the middle of the annual Shoshone-Bannock Indian Festival. All the hotels were booked. We did get to see some of the festival grounds while riding in Ft Hall, but for the most part I was just bitter. Jillian wanted to stop and see the 24 hour handball tournament, but I was too concerned about getting a room.
Sometime later Jillian's mother called us, having called half the hotel rooms in town. She'd found us a room at the Rodeway Inn. Unfortunately, it was a few miles out of our way. But we didn't have any other options.
Mood swings on the bike are surprising. After we'd secured a hotel room, I was in a much happier mood. Jillian, while sad she wasn't going to get to watch any sports, was also perking up. We fought with some traffic through Chubbuck, but generally had an easy ride in to town, eventually stopping at the Rodeway Inn across the street from the University.
Maybe it was because we were so happy just to have a hotel room, but the Rodeway seemed like a fantastic deal. The price was reasonable, the room was on the ground floor, and there were free cookies at night. The staff was so friendly they might have been robots. We took advantage of those before grabbing a real dinner at Elmer's Pancakes & Steakhouse. Lots of food at a fair price. Then it was back for some rest.
| posted at: 03:20 |
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Thursday, August 06, 2009
After a marvelous morning of drying laundry with a hair dryer, we set out to purchase some breakfast and send some mail. Our first stop was the post office, just down the street from our hotel. After setting the bike on a railing, Jillian and I went in to mail just over two pounds of receipts, maps, and small bits of gear back home. Then we were off to Albertsons, to get a late breakfast. I headed in first, grabbing two donuts, some yogurt, and a banana. Jillian went next.
While she was in there, I met a man outside the store who was curious as to just what we were doing. We talked about the two different routes we might take to Idaho Falls today. This was something I'd considered at length. We had two options:
- Over the Pass - At 88 miles, this is the shorter route by almost 20 miles. But it involves 2000 feet of climbing over a pass.
- Along the River - At 107 miles, this has the potential to take a lot longer. But almost all the route is along the Snake River, and therefore mostly downhill.
The man we were talking to was very much of the opinion that we should follow the river, stating that it'd likely take us a lot less time. Once he said he'd actually ridden both routes, I thought I should maybe actually listen to him. Then he started talking about some of his other stories, such as how he used to have a bicycle, but the cops had taken it after he'd been picked up on a warrant up in Montana.
Once Jillian returned and our new felon friend had left, we called Jillian's mother for more info on our two possible routes. The felon was probably right. We might average 4mph up the pass, so it might take us two or three hours. We'd probably be able to go twelve to fifteen along the river - potentially making up for the extra mileage. Since we were feeling a little lethargic, after an awful night in DuBois and a bad morning full of drying laundry, we decided to follow the river.
Being the very prepared people we are, we stopped at a gas station on the way out of town.
Then we were off, following US-26 South. We hopped off the road and got on a bicycle path that followed the road.
We had some trouble following the bike path, as sometimes it was hillier than the road, sometimes the path ran off into a development, and at least one the path just stopped, making us get back on the road. Once again, we completely failed at following a bike path.
Some seven or eight miles out of town, our road first found the river. On both sides of us we were surrounded by huge trees. This was a very, pleasant change after many days of riding through what felt like desert. Eventually we came to a gas station/grocery store at the intersection with US-189/191. We decided this would be as good a place any any to take care of our rather upset stomachs, and stopped to use a bathroom and have some coffee. I had discovered a new love of Starbucks Doubleshot Energy+Coffee
and I was hoping they'd help perk me up. We also took some time to wait outside at a picnic table.
Riding along the Snake was fantastic, and we were able to maintain fairly high speeds the entire time. Plus, the scenery was gorgeous.
The snake is a popular river for white water rafting, so we looked for an excuse to pull over. When we saw a sign for a place called "Lunch Counter" we had to stop, hoping for some food. Instead, we found a lot of people on the water, riding over "The Lunch Counter."
A little disappointed, and quite jealous of the rafters, we got back on the bike. Another twenty miles later, we came to the little town of Alpine, which had another gas station for us to visit. We grabbed some more food, by now quite hungry. Alpine sits at the base of the Palisades reservoir, and we briefly considered stopping for the night, because we just felt so darned tired. But we rode on, heading North into Idaho.
Once we were in Idaho, the valley where the reservoir was started to close in and we'd move up and down short hills, with great views of the lake.
We also passed a dying fawn, stuck on the side of the road with a severed foot, but clearly still alive. It was quite awful to see.
But there were also awesome bird nests on top of most of the telephone poles. We figured they were Osprey nests.
We rode almost all 18 miles of the Palisades, when we started seeing tremendous storm clouds above the mountains to our East, back in Wyoming. We started playing the shelter game, again, and trying to move as fast as we could. We arrived at the Dam Store just as the rain started to break.
Jillian had the owner of the store call the sheriff to report the dying deer, while I tried to keep the bike out of the rain. We weren't able to get milkshakes at the store either, instead we some more coffee and attempted to take pictures of a hummingbird while we waited on the rain. I also called my mother, to get a more recent weather report, since this was coming out of nowhere. Fortunately, she said we were likely to be safe.
Then it was back on the road again, to Swan Valley, where we stopped at a Philips 66. It still looked stormy over the mountains, making us extra glad we'd decided against taking the pass. A few miles later we hit our first climb of the day.
After a long, crawling climb, we came to the top of a plateau with expansive plains and were able to pick our speed back up.
Some miles later, we came to a rest stop, which we badly needed, and which was situated high above the Snake.
We went into the rest stop. Minutes later, I could hear a terrible, terrible wind outside. Doors were being blown open, trash cans were blown over, and we had to chase down pieces of our gear. I looked downriver again, and we were no longer able to see the hills in the distance. Everything in the valley was a terrible shade of brown. Figuring we were no more than ten miles from Idaho Falls, we hopped back on the bike and rode as hard as we could.
It wasn't long before the wind got even worse, and we started having to ride the bike at a constant angle in order to keep the wind from blowing us over. A steady, constant wind we'd ridden in before. This was something different. Wind would cycle back, hitting us at a different angle. So I'd have to angle the bike 20 degrees into the wind, only to right it suddenly when the wind shifted to a headwind (never a tailwind). A few miles in, a couple in a Subaru stopped and offered us a ride, but Jillian was quick to decline and I didn't see any way for them to move our gear. Besides, we figured it was only some wind. We'd dealt with a lot of wind before.
Less than twenty minutes later, an especially strong gust of wind pushed us hard toward the center line of the road. I instantly shifted my weight upright, to counteract only for the wind to die out. Unable to re-correct quickly enough, our front wheel caught the sandy gravel on the side of the road, making us lose our balance. I quickly threw a foot down as we started to fall, but our bicycle, plus us, plus trailer easily weigh almost 400 pounds. One leg on sandy soil wasn't enough, and we were thrown onto the ground. Righting the bike in the wind was nearly impossible. Fortunately, we crashed nearly outside a gas station/Subway - the only one we'd seen all day, and the only building before Idaho Falls on our route.
Jillian went inside first while I tried to find somewhere to place the bike. No matter what side of the store I looked at, there was too much wind. Plus, ever fearful, we were hesitant to put the bike where we couldn't see it. Fortunately, the gas station clerk was willing to let us stash the bike in the entry way of the gas station, both outside of the elements and where we could see it.
We chatted with the clerk for some time, before her cousin asked us if we'd like a ride back into town. Since by now it was almost 9 and it was getting dark, we were all too happy to agree. Only problem is that he'd need to run home to get a much larger vehicle. Still, we were so very grateful. In the meantime, after cleaning up a little blood from the crash, we sat down at the Subway, had dinner, and bought a lottery ticket.
We actually won a few times, ultimately getting up to being almost $35 ahead, but reinvesting our money every time and mostly losing.
When our ride returned, we found a way to load the entire bike into the back of his truck and headed for the Motel 6. We met some folks outside and discussed the ways the winds in the west are crazy. We found some more fast food to snack on and crashed, dreading make up miles tomorrow.
| posted at: 02:28 |
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Wednesday, August 05, 2009
When we woke up, the hotel office asn't open yet. Though most travelers could have just left their keys and gone, we hadn't paid yet, because we'd been checked in by the owner's son. Since we were very hungry, we packed the bike up and rode downtown.
The sidewalks of Dubois are made of wood, in an effort to keep the mud out of the buildings. The old section of Dubois is very western, with all sorts of history.
There's also a former mine in town. We weren't in town long before finding a coffee shop to camp out at and enjoy breakfast.
While there we talked at length with the owner, who had ridden a bicycle from Seattle to New York many years earlier. Once again, we really wanted to be done with the trip, and to just be hanging out at a coffee shop at home getting things done.
When we left the coffee shop, we stopped at a gas station so that Jillian could ride the giant Jackalope.
Then we were finally able to check out of the hotel and get on the road for real, only to stop at a gas station on the edge of town to enjoy our last civilized bathroom stop for a while. For a gas station in the middle of nowhere, the lines to use the bathroom were rather lengthy.
Perhaps because the scenery was finally green instead of brown, we were able to perk up and got into a better mood. We talked about teaching English, and told favorite short stories we remembered for a while. We soon hit more road construction. Time time, the pilot truck gave us a ride over the very, very rough road.
There couldn't have a been a better time for us to get a lift. The truck drove us almost half way up the pass, before dropping us off after the construction. We climbed for a while before coming to a little store/motel. Here we refueled on drinks and food and met another group of touring cyclists. This group was moving slow, taking a few seasons to do a cross country ride. This summer they were doing Denver to San Francisco, the long way.
The mountains started to look very impressive as we got closer and closer to the top.
But we were to be robbed of the chance to ride over the top of Togwotee Pass. Just before we got there we once again hit road construction, and had to hop in the back of the pilot truck.
We were actually very glad to not be on the road. There was no pavement at all, with huge machines all over. We'd read reports of cyclists who hit this stretch on a Sunday and were stuck riding it. We were glad it wasn't us. After the first stretch, we stopped at a transfer station and waited for another pilot truck. We finished the construction at about 2 in the afternoon.
From here we were hoping for a very easy ride to Jackson, over 3000 feet below us. We rode a little way before stopping at a gas station for lunch. Inside our jaws dropped at the price of a can of soup, but we were very amused by the cans of air for people who aren't used to the altitude.
Just down the street from the gas station we caught our best view yet of the Tetons.
The Tetons are something you need to see first hand. No picture will ever do them justice. All of Jackson Hole Valley was gorgeous in the same way. No matter where you were there was a set of five to seven thousand food tall mountains in view.
The change in geography between the two sides of the pass was startling. Now, on the west side of the pass, there were trees everywhere. Our original plan had been to ride around Jackson Lake, but we were quickly turned off to the idea by the steep prices at the gate to Yellowstone (Note: Turns out there is no road around the west side of Jackson Lake; I'd simply read the map wrong).
Riding the highway to Jackson wasn't a bad consolation ride. The wind was in our favor, and we rode hard to try and have some time in Jackson to explore. We even saw other cyclists out, though we were unable to catch them (they weren't touring cyclists). Some time after passing through the little hamlet of Moose, I bonked. We stopped at a gas station on the edge of town and refueled on slushies.
We dragged ourselves into Jackson, only to find it was much too touristy for our tastes. Mostly it was because of the absurd number of people in town, and the fact that our night at the Motel 6 was going to rank as one of our most expensive hotel rooms all trip.
Jackson was a kind of neat town, and I'm sure it's a fun place to visit if you have the money, but we just felt out of place. We checked in to the Motel 6, which was full of other young people traveling, and discovered that we were spending the night in an Ikea Catalog.
We did have enough time to walk back toward town for a real dinner. We had some wonderful potpie at the Sidewinder, as well as some fantastic salads. Though we couldn't have been very good food critics after last night's meal. After the walk home, it was laundry time. Unfortunately, there were lines to do laundry, and we ended up hand washing everything, hoping it would dry by morning, which was doubtful, since it was getting late already.
| posted at: 02:20 |
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Tuesday, August 04, 2009
Despite arriving so late the night before, we started early again today, since we simply couldn't stand another day of night riding. We had breakfast at the Pronghorn, then took off to see about purchasing a new tire. Downtown Lander looked like a pretty awesome place, but since it was still early the outdoor shops weren't open. Even then, they were outdoor outfitters, we couldn't find a real bicycle shop. We decided to ride on.
Lander really is right in the wilderness. We passed within a few feet of deer on someone's front lawn before realizing they were real. The people also seem pretty awesome. Someone had a dragon skull on their front lawn.
The ride north out of town was greener than usual, but still very open. It might have even been a nice ride if we hadn't both been in a bad mood.
We eventually came to the town of Ft Washakie, where we stopped at a grocery store for supplies. And by supplies, I mean donuts, which this dog very much wanted to enjoy.
Ft Washakie is the home of Sacajawea's gravesite. We didn't take the time to stop, since we were once again in a rush to get to DuBois. Like a number of towns we passed, Ft Wasakie had its name on the hillside.
Following Ft Washakie we had a difficult climb followed by long, windy miles of open space. We hit a wide, empty plateau at mile 26, giving us a few minutes to simply push in the wind without feeling like we were getting anywhere. But, a few miles later, we had another wonderful downhill to the intersection with US-26. Not long away from here we found another rest area, which was a relief. Any excuse to get out of the wind we were happy to take.
Down the road we started seeing construction signs.
We rode to the head of a long line of cars, where we talked with the flagger at length. He was very critical of the people in Montana for being so backwards, much like how people in New York criticize Pennsylvanians, and people in Maryland criticize West Virginians. He also told the story of Crowheart Butte to some of the folks in cars.
In 1866 the Shoshone and Crow tribes fought a battle at the base of Crowheart Butte. When Chief Washakie was finally victorious, he placed the heart of the Crow chief on his lance at the (depending on who you talk to) top of the butte.
Finally the pilot car returned, and we were told that we could follow a group of cars through the next five or six miles of construction. This was infuriating, as there was no way we could possibly keep up with the cars. If we were going to need to pull off somewhere in the middle of the construction and wait for the next passing pilot car anyway, why hadn't we been allowed to just go?
A few miles in, we passed the construction crew tarring the roadway. We stopped, waiting for a pilot car to go by, so we could be sure we were out of their way. The crew waved us through, but as we passed the tarring truck, they turned it on, spraying us with tar. Since there was no way to be sure if they'd done it on purpose, we rode on, eventually coming to the town of Crowheart.
We stopped at a general store, purchasing some ice cream for the heat. We also chatted with three county employees eating their lunch outside the store. They were driving up and down the road, spraying weeds and had passed us a number of times and had seen how miserable we looked. After seeing Jillian's legs, they gave us some very, very effective bug spray.
After leaving Crowheart, things got even emptier as we averaged about eight miles an hour in the wind.
Eventually we found our way to the entrance to the Wind River Canyon, at about mile 60. The canyon was an awesome break - the walls kept the wind off us, and the canyon kept the air a little bit more humid. Of course, it also gave us something to look at.
The homes we saw started to change as well.
Although the picture we got doesn't show it, the homes were much nicer, and in more of an Alpine style. We'd been told that the billionaires were buying the millionaires out in Jackson, so the millionaires were moving to Dubois. We very much loved riding through the canyon, only wishing we'd been doing it the other way, so that we weren't constantly moving uphill.
We rode through the very western style streets of Dubois at about 9pm. Dubois is very much a tourist town, and everything was open. We were ecstatic at the idea of eating a real meal. We checked into the Branding Iron Inn, where the owner's son provided us with a key (we'd reserved ahead of time, which was good, since we got the last room). The rooms were great, with high ceilings, log cabin walls, and a very reasonable price. We dropped our stuff off and got back out the door.
Our friend Staph had told us about the Cowboy Cafe, and had said they had the best burger in the world. But when we got there, we discovered that even though they were full of people, they were actually closed. As was the Italian place. And the bar. And all the gas stations. We thought about getting the bike back out and trying to ride a little further past town, where we thought there might be more eateries. After all, there was a Super 8 down the road a ways. But we couldn't be sure. Jillian started looking for a soda machine - just anything other than our standard fare of PowerBars.
We found one in a laundromat, whose hours said it was closed. We got some change together and purchased a can of root beer, a can of Sprite, and a little bag of Cheez-Its, and took our food back to the hotel room. We still had some days old bagels in our bag, which I covered in our peanut butter and choked down. It was awful. I washed it down with Sprite and went to take a shower.
Unfortunately, the shower was rather old and came from a time when people weren't generally as tall as me. I had to crouch all shower.
Showered, I got in bed and got to sleep before the hunger could keep me up.
| posted at: 02:20 |
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Monday, August 03, 2009
Today was going to be a very, very long ride. 130 miles, with only one minor town. We'd be fortunate to even pass a gas station. It was the day we'd been worried about for a month, having almost quit the trip over fears of this day. We knew we'd be riding well into the night. We hate riding at night, but knowing you're not going to have a choice leaves you kind of calm about it. We had a leisurely breakfast at the Hampton, since it was hot and delicious. We got on the road around 7, rather than 5 or 6 like we should have.
The ride out of Rawlins was barren. As soon as US-287 leaves town you can see a landscape completely devoid of any buildings. Just flat grassland with low hills in the background. Everything is a shade of brown. But there was a generous shoulder, and the winds hadn't picked up yet, so we were content.
Only 11 miles out of Rawlins we passed an exciting sign.
Then we had an amazing view. We were crossing into the Great Divide Basin, a 3900 square mile area where water is unable to drain to either ocean. We were at the southern edge of the basin, and could just make out the northern edge from atop the rim. We played the Horizon game, with Jillian estimating the edge to be some 6 or 7 miles away, and me guessing 11 or 12.
As we descended into the basin, we ran into Michael, a cyclist who was trying to ride to Virginia very quickly. He recommended we not try to make Lander tonight, since it was just too far. About ten miles later, we came across an older Swedish couple, who had left Lander two days earlier and was only hoping to make Rawlins by nightfall. The edge of the basin didn't look any closer.
The basin wound up being twenty miles across, without a single paved road crossing our route the entire time. We didn't even see a tree. Just dunes, scrub, alkali flats, and the occasional antelope.
At the edge of the Basin was Grandma's, a roadside stop famous among cyclists for the pie. We'd heard so many stories about how fantastic it was to stop here. Inside we simply found a tired woman, who was sold out of pies. We ordered some Lemonade and some English Muffins. But the lemonade had things floating in it, so we didn't really drink much of it and instead got back on the road quickly, and rather demoralized.
Just over the ridge from Grandma's, we ran into another sign.
Some 40 miles in, the hills began to look a bit like mountains.
This section of Wyoming is barren, but gorgeous. We were more than a little envious of the motorcyclists we saw pass us.
After passing through Muddy Gap (which wasn't muddy at al), we came to Three Forks, where WY-220 meets US-287 and heads off to Casper and Independence Rock. We stopped at a Gas station here, the last one we'd see until Lander. Inside, every available surface was covered by signatures from other travelers.
We may have also eaten some ice cream.
Although I would have liked to see Independence Rock, we didn't have the time (it would have taken an extra day). We stayed on 287 North. We'd be following part of the Oregon trail route for a while.
Our next stop came as a surprise, at Split Rock Historic Site.
The large cleft in the rock made it a natural landmark for people on the Oregon trail and it later became a stop on the Pony Express. We enjoyed it as a place with a working port-a-potty. We did not enjoy the winds that were starting to pick up.
Some twenty miles later we came to another oasis at Jeffrey City. Jeffrey City is a modern day ghost town. In 1957 a Uranium mine opened, and thousands of people moved there. A large high school, with an Olympic sized swimming pool was built. Hundreds of buildings were constructed for the workers. Then the mine closed, and 95% of the workers moved out within three years. Today only about one hundred people remain.
We stopped at bar, which also happened to be the only place open. Inside the bartender was playing World of Warcraft and watching Bonanza, but was happy to get us a couple of cokes. On our way out of town we passed Mocking Bird Pottery, where we heard the cyclists can camp indoors for free. I'd spent a good portion of the day before reading about hotel options and there was apparently a hotel in Jeffrey City, but it was so sketchy that most cyclists decided to ride on. We saw something that might have been a hotel, or might have been an abandoned former hotel. We rode on.
Our next stop as the Sweetwater Rest stop, another twenty miles away. The ride there started to look a little scary.
Plus the winds started to pick up. Although we certainly saw quite a bit of lightening on the horizon, we managed to outrun the storm. But then another storm came up, chasing us for a few more miles. This process repeated the whole way to the Sweetwater, where we brought the bike right into the main building at the rest area and sat for a while, rehydrating and trying to keep warm. While there we talked at length with a man from Iowa, who loved the idea of our trip.
Once it seemed like the rains had died down enough to safety ride again we went back outside. It was early evening when we started up the climb out of Sweetwater, chased again by storms. Despite having almost fifty miles left to ride, we were fairly confident. The Adventure Cycling maps include an elevation profile on the back and we knew that some miles after Sweetwater there would be a long downhill that would speed us into Lander.
That downhill came at mile 92. From the top we estimated we could easily see fifty miles to the mountains far to our north. The added speed also gave us some hope that we could avoid the storms chasing behind us. We couldn't get pictures of most of it, since we were in such a hurry to ride out of there. Jillian did snap one, toward the end.
It would have been a fantastic end of the day, as we watched the sun go down on our descent. But we still had almost thirty miles to go, and it was rapidly getting dark. Once it was no longer safe to ride, we pulled off to put on lights as quickly as we could.
We regretted that decision immediately. Despite stopping for no longer than a minute or two, we were assaulted by hundreds of mosquitoes, who bit us through our clothes and bit Jillian through the bike seat. We were in agony as we rode as hard as our legs could push us, with hundreds of aching points on our bodies, as we tried to outrun the bugs we couldn't even see in the dark.
With the dark came quieter winds, but up ahead on the horizon we could see lightning strikes that appeared to be explosions. Jillian kept her eyes on our surroundings, looking for lightening that was too close, and we both played the shelter game - Jillian would call out the mileage whenever we found something, anything that we might hide under in the event of a terrible storm. There wasn't much to pick from - the best shelter we found was rock overhangs on the side of the road.
Ten miles outside of Lander we came across a girl riding a horse. We didn't think to call to them, but as we passed we spooked the horse, almost causing the girl to look control and sending sparks flying from the horse's hooves.
Finally, at just after midnight, we arrived in Lander. We tried the First Choice Inn, only to find it completely booked by a number of buses out of Salt Lake. There aren't many hotels in Lander, so we tried the Best Western Pronghorn, where we were able to get the last room, a suite, for much more money than we wanted to pay. But we had no other choices - there may have been no other room available in town. The sense of relief when we finally moved the bike into our suite was beyond belief. We'd actually ridden the hardest day on the entire journey.
But then we walked over to McDonald's to get a pathetic dinner. We'd only had trip food to eat since those English Muffins in the morning, so we were happy to just find somewhere open, but it wasn't enough or good enough food. We ate a quiet dinner in the kitchenette of our Hotel Room. The bug bites were miserable. Getting to sleep wasn't hard, but we just wanted to be done with this trip.
| posted at: 02:20 |
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Sunday, August 02, 2009
We woke up feeling awful. We'd slept like rocks, but after getting in late and only having a McDonald's dinner, we weren't doing very well. We called Jillian's parents, who were able to arrange for us to spend the night in the Hampton Inn across the street. We'd just need to find a way to kill some time until check in.
We started by trying to take advantage of the free hotel breakfast. We found it to be sketchy days old pastries served out of kind of clean tupperware. Stomachs a little worse for wear, we packed out gear and left the hotel as quickly as possible.
We rode into town, a few miles down business route 30. As the library wasn't open, and the post office wasn't open, we found ourselves at Huckleberry's Espresso. Outside was a through-hiker on the Continental Divide Trail. We swapped stories for a while, each of us unable to imagine the journey the other was taking.
Inside Huckleberry's we had a real, delicious breakfast with real caffeinated beverages. I'd given up coffee in anticipation of this trip, and after over a month of not having any, it tasted fantastic. Since we only had the one computer, Jillian and I split up. She took the camera and went exploring town, while I stayed behind and worked on the blog (In fact, I wrote the entry for St Clairsville to Newark, almost exactly a month earlier).
Rawlins has a number of fun murals that you can check out at Jillian's entry. At the coffee shop I had a long conversation with one of the barista's children, which rather got in the way of me getting any real blogging done. Eventually Jillian returned, so we got Ice Cream and chatted with another family. The mom of that family had grown up in York, only half an hour from where Jillian had grown up.
Some time early in the afternoon we decided to explore the rest of Rawlins and check in to the Hampton Inn. We rode down to a little park by the train tracks for some fun pictures.
Then we went over to the prison, which we chose not to enter, in order to save some money. It was an impressive looking building, which housed a number of frontier inmates.
Across from the prison was the bike shop, which was unfortunately closed, leaving us to ride our booted bicycle another long day to Lander.
On the ride back to the Hampton, we noticed advertisements for a rodeo. We were in Wyoming, how could we not go to a rodeo?
Of course, once we were in the cloud that is the bed at the Hampton, we asked ourselves how we could possibly leave the bed to see the rodeo. But we went anyway.
The Rawlins Rodeo park was large, and full of trailers that people lived in at the rodeo. We were going to see a local "farmhand" rodeo - the big one wouldn't be until the next week.
We watched a number of local teams compete at a series of events, but mostly just felt bad for the calves they were catching and pretending to brand.
When the rodeo wrapped up, we walked to the end of the park and had dinner at Penny's Diner, which appeared to be an authentic 1950s silver diner. We were slightly disappointed to discover that it was actually a minor chain affiliated with Oak Tree Inn, but were not disappointed by the food, which was every bit as greasy and dinery as you'd expect out of a 50s diner.
At dark we retreated to the Hampton and watched some TV. I could have gone to sleep immediately, but on those beds I feel like you need to stay up for at least a little while, just to enjoy how comfortable they are.
| posted at: 02:20 |
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Saturday, August 01, 2009
After our long, awful day we weren't too anxious to get up. Bu the promise of a hot breakfast ultimately convinced us. The Ramada had someone making omelets which we very much enjoyed.
After dragging the bike back downstairs we got slowly on the road, in quite a bit of pain. Our first stop was the Post Office, to mail some extra papers back home (every pound counts!). The Post Office we found was in a gas station, and the clerk had to stop manning the cash register in order to mail our packages.
We wanted to spend some time in Laramie, specifically hunting for a bike shop to replace our tire. I called a couple of shops, finally finding one on the far north side of town that thought we had a tire our size. On the way there, we saw what we thought were interesting license plates.
Our current theory is that the number on the left of the cowboy is the county number and the number on the right side is the car number. All in decimal.
We looked around the bike shop, eventually finding something that was close to our tire, but not exactly our tire. From what we'd heard and read, both Lander and Rawlins had bike shops, so we'd have to press on and try to buy a new tire at one of those.
On our way out of town, we stopped at another gas station, since it was likely the last place we would be able to stop for a long, long time. While there, we met a couple who were also on a cross country adventure. Two years earlier they'd sold everything they owned, bought an RV, and ever since had been traveling the country. They were currently on their way to San Francisco, where they'd bought a place and were going to finally settle down. Jillian and I munched on some wafers and seeds.
Wyoming is one of a few states where cyclists can ride on the interstate, in part because interstates are often the only way to get from one place to another. Someone in Colorado had told us that there were a few counties in Colorado which have more paved road than the entire state of Wyoming. We'd be taking the interstate the entire way to Rawlins.
Interstates are boring. Really boring.
Unfortunately, it wasn't long before construction started.
Riding on the interstate made me nervous. Riding on the interstate in a construction zone was even worse. After passing through a few barrels we were stopped by a cop. Wyoming State Troopers may be the nicest people alive. He said that while there was going to be something like fifteen miles of construction, they were only redoing bridges, so most of the pavement would be empty, and that as long as we were careful to walk on some of the bridges it would be no problem for us to ride in the construction. Half the interstate, all to ourselves!
Thank you much, Wyoming State Police.
We'd checked the Garmin before leaving and learned of a gas station about twenty miles in at exit 290. We were so excited.... only to find that it was closed. Heartbreaking. And the gas station was the only thing there. The only thing there. We rode over a cattle guard to get off the exit ramp, and we carefully followed the only paved road to the former gas station. We turned around again, noticing for the first time a port a potty behind some bushes.
The port a potty was actually the location of a little camp, where construction workers lived rather than commute twenty miles or more to the nearest town. We arrived at just the right time, with some workers letting the driver of an SUV use the port a potty. They were kind enough to leave the door unlocked for us.
Then it was back into the construction. More boring, uneventful, interstate riding. In some ways it was even more boring than regular highway riding. Since there were no cars and no shortage of trucks, the roads had quite a bit of dirt and stone on them. A couple miles later, we came across a "Honeypot"
The Honeypot was a portable port a potty. Awesome. Little shaky in the wind through.
Ah, the wind. Every five miles we saw an appropriate sign.
Sometimes there were even little windsocks attached to the signs.
In such a windy place, it would only be fitting for there to be windmills.
We'd just arrived to the little town of Arlington, home of a little, tiny gas station.
Inside was a sign that listed answers to all of our questions.
We bought some lunch and sat down at their table for a while, enjoying the reading material.
American Towman. Complete with comic strip. Amazing.
Back on the road again, we rode over the top of the ridge. About six miles later we ran across a rest area. It was an interesting place, with picnic tables surrounded on three sides by large brick walls. I read the sign, which described how the wind cleared mountains of snow in the winter, creating exposed food for animals to eat. It also had a ridiculous lie on it.
We couldn't stay long though. It was dinner time already, and the wind hadn't died down at all. We rode another 12 miles before hitting WY-72, which is where the Transamerica Trail hooks up with our route. Here we found another gas station, where we could hit the bathroom and grab some more snacks.
Then, for the second night in a row, we got to see a sunset. At least this time it wasn't raining. And with night came in a break in the winds.
Wyoming had been a terrible, terrible place all day. Many times we'd felt fortunate to make six or seven miles an hour. Now, in the dark, it was fantastic. It wasn't too cold and there was no wind. Since we were on the interstate there was sufficient shoulder. Since we were in Wyoming, there was almost no traffic.
A few miles out of Sinclair, we stopped when we saw a gas station sign. But this late at night, it wasn't open. We rode on.
Of course, before long, construction started up. Suddenly it felt like we were riding on rumble strips. When we arrived in Sinclair, we got off the highway to stop for a few minutes at a truck stop. Fortunately, this truck stop was of the 24 hour variety. We didn't stay long though, wanting to get to Rawlins as soon as we could. From our rest stop we could see the lights of the Sinclair Refinery.
Yes, I know the picture is a little shaky. It was cold and we were exhausted.
Although we didn't much care for the construction, we very much liked the shoulder. We got back on the highway and rode on to Rawlins, just a short, if cold, hop down the road. Interestingly enough, it was down US-30, a road we'd first been on back in Pennsylvania.
We pulled off the highway, getting on US-287 (Which we were going to be on for a while). It was nearly 11 as we found or way to a McDonalds. I carefully walked the bike down a hill while Jillian ran over to the drive through to ask if we could take the bike through. Thankfully, they let us. We got some food, and then set out to find our hotel. They had an awesome drink machine.
We rode into the 1st Choice Inn, where we tried to check in. The 1st choice is a short little cinder block building, which kind of feels like a prison inside. However, it was by far the least expensive room in town. Jillian watched the bike while I tried to check in, only to be thwarted by a broken credit card machine. There was another couple there who were trying to check in as well, who didn't really speak much English. As I didn't speak Mandarin, I wasn't much help explaining that the problem wasn't with the card, it was with the reader. After twenty or thirty minutes of trying different cards and many hand gestures, the clerk finally agreed to give us both rooms on the condition we formally checked in during the morning.
While the room did look a bit like a prison, with cinder block everywhere, it was a warm place to spend the night. We ate our McDonalds food as though it was a gourmet meal. We thought about the next day's ride. Lander had to be our next stop, as it was the next place with a hotel. Unfortunately, it was also 130 miles away. We decided it would be impossible, especially since it was midnight already. Instead, we decided to call Jillian's parents in the morning and hopefully cash in on their remaining rewards points for a night in the Hampton Inn.
| posted at: 01:21 |
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