Day 25: Tuesday, June 20, 2015

Stop to Stop: Near New Meadows to Oxbow, Oregon

Underway: 7:15 am Off Bike: 7:15 pm Ride Time: 5:15 hrs Stayed At: Campsite
Miles Traveled: 84.2 Total Miles: 1,739.6 Weather: Sunny, warm, calm

First Things First: First time in Oregon; First broken spokes.

Mile to Mile: Today’s goal was Oregon – my traveling partners are motivated to get to their final state before the ocean so Oregon it is. Our routine has become travel 15-20 and stop for breakfast, travel another reasonable distance while it’s still cool and have lunch and relax (in the shade) and push on to our hoped for destination. Today it worked perfect. We felt good and the miles clicked by. It didn’t hurt that the day started with a long downhill on a quite road almost down to our first stop.

After some challenging “mongo”climbs and fast downhills, we finally flew down into the dreaded Hell’s Canyon – which turned into one of the most beautiful rides of the day along a 14 mile Snake River reservoir with steep hills and rock walls along the sides.

It has been great traveling with a couple other bikers – we’ve had some great conversations on the road and lots of laugh – especially when we are tired and delusional. We are all different personalities, backgrounds and experience levels but for some reason we fit together well. It’s been fun and I’m looking forward to our future adventures on our journey across Oregon. We can almost smell the ocean. Crazy to think about isn’t it?