"Never Say No to Adventure" : 2015

Friday, August 28, 2015

"Roads go ever ever on, Over rock and under tree, By caves where never sun has shone, By streams that never find the sea. Over snow by winter sown, And through the merry flowers of June, Over grass and under stone, And under mountains in the moon. Roads go ever ever on, Under cloud and under star, Yet feet that wandering have gone, Turn at last to home afar. Eyes that fire and sword have seen, And horror in the halls of stone, Look at last on meadows green, And trees and hills they long have known." --- Mr. Baggins 12 days (11 riding) and 798 miles for this #biketour

Redmond to Secret Camp photos

Jim's yard in Redmond. It was comfortable!

Bear something ranch outside of Redmond

The bikeway detour betweeen Redmond and Sisters

I made friends!

Normally you can see the Sisters from here. Silly Spicy Fog.

The east side of Mckenzie is hella pretty.

Biomes are changing as I climb!!

Windy Point! Those are Belknap and Little Belknap directly behind the sign. Washington was to the right, Jefferson to the right of that (barely visible), and then Hood (not visible). To the left is Black Butte I think.

Middle and North Sister

Mt. Washington to my right (left side of photo). A smoke obscured Jefferson is to the right of it.

Kyle should pay me money for this kind of photo.

Descending! Different climate indeed!

I kept catching up with a car on these turns and having to stop to let it get ahead.

Home for the night. Sort of hidden spot of 242 near the bottom.

My water source.

Redmond to Secret Creek Campsite

Two questions spring to mind:

First, why is that humans have to cook their food now? I should look that up. So much of my traveling life is spent trying to find clean water because I need so much of it, but honestly if society broke down I'd be fine for finding water. Food would be the real problem.

Second, how come in the Guns N Roses video for November Rain are the people having an outside wedding in November anyway? What the hell guys?

Today was a great 60 mile, 4:31 on bike, roughly 8:30 to 5:30 ride. Part of why it's so great is because I've been getting pretty good at following pretty good advice lately.

After a good sleep in Jim's yard, the guy who ran the concert who I became friends with after Sue introduced us, I hopped on the bike and began an easy 20 mile ride to Sisters. About 5 miles before Sisters I saw a scenic bikeway sign and got out my Oregon bikeways map to see what was up. At that time another cyclist pulled up and told me all about it. Basically it was 3 miles farther, way prettier, and had way fewer cars Sold!

Almost immediately after turning on to the road I was caught by four other cyclists from Sisters and they rode with me all the way to town. Turns out Sisters is FULL of cyclists.

In Sisters I picked up another bike tube and bottle (one of mine split down the side) then hung out and had coffee for about an hour and a half, meeting and talking to many other cyclists at a coffee shop. Sisters is a pretty cool town.

From there is was 15 miles to the top of McKenzie pass, where I saw almost as many cyclists as cars on the road. Freaking Heaven! Not to mention the climb itself is beautiful, and not too difficult. I think Ochoco and maybe even Keys are harder passes from this side.

I hung out at the top for another hour and a half, talking to people, meeting PCT hikers, cyclists, and eventually another bagger going the other way. He let me know about a secret campsite area just before 242 intersects 126, within a mile or two of where I was going to spend $20 to camp.

He showed me it on his phone GPS, and then I found it on my phone GPS (I had downloaded the area GPS maps ahead of time using an app called Gia so I could find the PCT trailhead), and now here I am! I have a huge clearing in the woods all to myself, a great stream to drink out of (I carry purification drops), and it's bliss. This is more like backpacking than bike touring, and after the dry desert, camping in thick woods is heaven.

There is almost no service here, but I was able to get out just a couple texts to Iris telling her where I was and GPS coordinates. That's the only downside to camping this isolated, it violates basic the backpacking rule of "tell people where you are going" unless you can get a text out. That, and it makes it hard to explore towns which is a lot of why I do these tours. However, there is no town around here, so backpacking it is!

It's a very calm way to end a bike tour. Tomorrow I ride 60-70 miles downhill into Eugene, although I expect a headwind so it won't be the easiest. I've ridden about 1,400 miles so far this summer though, so I'm sure I'll survive.

//Morning Edit: Last night around 9pm (dark) a guy with a flashlight came walking down the road to my camp area. His name was Carl, and he's been camping in isolated spots around Oregon for 30 years, although he's originally from Wisconsin. Turns out the spot I was in is actually pretty well known among some, and that large groups of people often come here to party (no-one did tonight).

I knew by the looks of it that this was possible, but there was no-where else I could get my bike. Carl and I talked for about an hour, and he gave me lots of "secret" info about spots in the area and techniques I can do to find more suitable spots for me in the future. It was like getting air-dropped a knowledge bomb from a camping god.

Now I've got some maps to buy and some techniques to try out, and if I get half as good as he is I'll be able to find public land secret spots all over the state! That's way better than him being an axe-murderer!

ILYI