Prineville, OR

Once again, slightly rushed to get 'net stuff done in a library time frame. Also, once again, I've forgotten the little things I was going to remember to write about...

Anyhoo, the ride has been going nicely. It has still been pretty hot during the days, but not so bad lately as it was before. The nights have been nice and cool - this morning was actually a little too cold to go more than 10mph or so without fingertips freezing. I'm within 300 miles or so of being done, haven't added it up in a couple days, but the tentative idea is to get to the coast this weekend!

Planning on heading on down the road after this library stop, not sure exactly where to though because there aren't any campsites listed for a pretty good ways on the map. The next town listed as providing camping is Sisters, which is a little further than I'd like to go, but it's definitely within reasonable range. From there, I'll get to decide between two routes to get on to Eugene. The regular route goes over McKenzie Pass, the longer (by 20-something miles) alternate route goes over Santiam Pass. Problem is that McKenzie pass is apparently closed due to construction work and a rock slide. Heard through the grapevine that the road was closed to cars, but open to bikers until the rock slide. Also heard that the slide wasn't all that big, so I'm thinking I might just give it a try anyhow. But, that decision doesn't come until tomorrow, so I'll try to get some more current, local, information when it gets closer.

Baker City was a neat little town. Ended up getting in touch with Mike, another biker who was in town, and he showed me a little park to crash in for the night (his friend's place where he was going to invite me, was full with him and other family types visiting.) The park worked out well, except for another early morning (3:30) sprinkler session, but fortunately it wasn't nearly as bad as the one a few weeks ago. Killed several hours in the morning waiting for a bike shop to open up so I could get a couple innertubes. Bought a couple interesting books to read - one on a guy's travels with a Kayak and one on Genghis Kahn, had a coffee, and read for a bit. The kayak book only took a couple days to get through, but I really enjoyed it. It got me to thinking about international travel ideas. Definitely want to get out of the country more in the future.

After Baker City, I rode to Austin Junction, where there is a convenience store/restaurant type place that lets bikers camp out back for $5. It was a little bit strange, nothing major, just odd customers, weird (indoor) plumbing, strange attitudes, etc. The next morning, I had to fill up my bottles with a garden hose outside as the store hadn't opened up yet. Nastiest tasting hose I've ever drank out of - kept tasting rubber after several rinses down the road. Made some instant pudding for dinner thinking that the powdered milk and chocolate might mask the flavor. Nope! But, did sleep well, bought some gummy worms, and had water, so that's really all that I needed.

The next day after Austin Junction was neat riding. New mountains on the horizon, neat geology closer to the road. Still hot and dry out during the day. Stayed in a city park in Dayville right beside a small creek that was chock full of crawdads of all sizes. Thought pretty seriously about catching enough to cook them for dinner, but decided against it.

Monday morning I left Dayville and rode through the "John Day Fossil Beds National Monument" - didn't see any fossils unfortunately (probably because I skipped the visitor center.) Took a nice long break for lunch (Mountain Dew, granola bars, some chocolate, and an entire bag of Goldfish) in Mitchell, where I had a fun conversation with a couple local middle/highschool kids about cars, bikes, music, and other random stuff. They told me all about the campground at Ochoco Pass, a few miles further on, and mentioned that it had water, so I ended up heading there to camp last night. The campground was a USFS self-pay type deal, fee for a single vehicle/night is $12, but I only had a $10 and some $20s, ended up paying $10 and leaving a little note on the envelope, hope that my shorting them $2 doesn't end up causing a problem :). Seems like the fee should be less anyways for a single guy on a bike rather than 6 people in a big SUV, but that's just my opinion. Anyways, it was a nice campground with lots of shade provided by huge pine trees. Got pretty cold overnight, guessing somewhere in the lower 40s.

Baker City, OR

OK, so this is going to be another super-rushed posting from a library.

Got out of McCall yesterday morning via a ride up to New Meadows with Clair, then biking from there to a campground on the Snake River, which is the Idaho/Oregon border in that area. Ride was scenic, but quite hot. After that last post, I found a thermometer outside - 103 in the shade. At the end of the day, as the trail dropped down into Hells Canyon, I had some rediculous wind - sagebrush and sand blowing everywhere. Had to get into lower gears and push a little just to keep going downhill. Nice little campsite for the night with showers!

Today has been really hot. I don't know exactly what the temps were, but they were damn hot. And, just for fun, there's been practically nowhere to stop for a break. No shade either. It's been pretty, but I've been having to somewhat ration water, which isn't much fun. I'm about done with the arid/semi-arid climate thing for a while - think the coast is going to be a nice change in a few days!

On that note, I've been thinking about where to end this trip, and today think I came up with a good destination. I'll be flying out of Portland on the 8th, but hadn't decided how far to ride the bike. The official transamerica route finishes in Astoria, OR, but also has a spur off to Florence, OR which is a bit more direct route to the coast. I'm not set on following the official route the entire way, although I do definitely want to make it to the Pacific. Today, I called up a friend from the AT, Smiles (aka Laura,) who moved to the coast of Oregon fairly recently and found out that she lives right on the transam route! So, at this point, the plan is to ride transam to Smiles' place, then probably mail the bike home from there and head on to Portland one way or another. One benefit of that plan is it gives me a bit more time between riding and getting to the airport, so I might be able to spend a day or two in Portland on the way home. All that is subject to change, of course :).

Finally, just got an email from Mike, a biker I met a few days before the raft trip, saying that he's in Baker City as well and to give him a call. Yay for local contacts!

Cambridge, ID - raft trip writeup

Man, it's really hot out.

That was in Cambridge, before dropping into Hells Canyon, wanna guess what the temps did then? Yup.

And, I'm way behind on this blog thing. Most of this was written up 8/11:

The raft trip was a lot of fun, and a lot of work - very glad that we managed to work it all out! Got to spend a zero day in McCall getting errands taken care of and getting my stuff ready to go on the river trip - think that was Friday.

Saturday was spent getting the gear and boats all ready to go over at the HCR (Hells Canyon Rafting - Clair's raft company) place, then getting that all out to the water. I helped out a bit with the packing to the extent I could without knowing where everything was stored in the shop. Ended up just doing a lot of heavy lifting once the boxes, coolers, and boats were ready to load into the boat. Kurt (HCR owner, guide, and cool dude) asked me what I was doing next summer - to us transient types that's a job offer! Still planning on doing summer school next summer in order to graduate sooner, but it's a damn tempting backup plan!

We packed an amazing amount of gear into the back of Kurt's truck and headed out for the put-in. Inflated the boats and got them in the water, then Kurt and Meg (the other guide for the trip) left to take care of other stuff. Clair and I camped out there for the night after getting the gear all set to go the following morning.


Somewhat surprisingly, the beach stayed pretty quiet all night - apparently it's a common place for local kids to go party, and given that it was a Saturday night, we anticipated there being a lot of noise. Also got to see some amazing stars with the clear air and low light pollution! Suppose that there had been plenty nice nights leading up to that, but with the high daytime temperatures, I had been going to bed early in order to start riding in the cool morning air and get to the day's destination before it got super hot.

Sunday morning, we did some more gear shuffling after breakfast (Poptarts!!) Meg, the other guide for the trip, showed up and got her boat setup the way she likes it (every guide has their own packing style and preferences on how to inflate the boats) The guests arrived by shuttle van and got a briefing from Meg on some basic rafting stuff in the parking lot. I stood back and listened to the talk, then we all got our lifejackets on, hopped in the boats, and were off! Two of the guests took the duckies (inflatable kayaks,) two hopped in Meg's boat, and Clair and I took the other boat.


For the first day, the river was relatively flat, with a couple little rapids, but as I recall the biggest was a class 2 (more on rapid classification here). We stopped after an hour or so and setup a "water bar" for lunch.

A water bar, in this sense, is just a folding table setup right on the shore, with the legs pushed down into the sand, so that you can keep your feet in the water while serving up food. These guided trips are very nicely catered; lunch had plenty of vegetables, multiple types of bread, meat, and cheese to make sandwiches, plenty of beverage options, and a choice of desserts! Apparently, some guests refer to these trips as "roughing it," but the food we had on the trip was, on average, better than what I tend to eat at home during the school year.

After a few more hours of rafting, including breaks to swim and cool off, we made it to our campsite for the night. Meg, Clair, and I quickly had tents going up, a kitchen being assembled, a toilet tent getting setup, and a table and chairs to eat at. Roughing it.... Fortunately, this group of guests turned out to be really cool and helped us with setting things up a little bit. As the trip progressed, they got more and more involved with the setup and breakdown of the camps and lunch breaks.



We took a nice break to go swimming, mess around with the duckies, and walk around. Dinner started with an appetizer of fried *** cheese and crackers, then the main course was salmon (gardenburgers for the vegetarians,) veggies, and chocolate cake (with confetti!) for dessert. After cleaning up, the guests had a game called "catchphrase" that they invited us to play. One of those annoying little electronic gizmos, but it turned out to be entertaining despite the annoying noises it was making. Not a big fan of electronics in the outdoors. Visited for a while, then the guests went off to their tents and the guides and I cowboy camped a little way down the beach. Another day of beautiful weather outside!

The other three days of the trip were more or less the same theme, but with different scenery. It was interesting watching (and I suppose being a part of) the guides and the guests get to know each other better and have more in-depth conversations on things. One interesting angle on this trip was that Meg is going down to work in McMurdo, Antarctica next October - the same place I spent the austral summer '05-06 (blog.) While Meg was picking my brain on Antarctic stuff, Clair was talking with one of the guests about doing recovery work in New Orleans (two of the guests coordinate reconstruction efforts over there,) I was talking with the guides about their jobs, and the three of us were talking retirement plans with one of the other guests, who is a financial planner. A floating career fair!

For most of the trip, I was just a passenger, but did row one of the boats for a few little sections. It's tough work, but I'm sure part of what makes it seem hard is not having good technique down. Got to take a spin in one of the duckies through a few rapids on the second to last day when there was too much headwind for the guests (who, to their credit, had kept the duckies occupied for the entire time up to that point. I was pretty amazed that they stuck with it that long given their desk-job type careers. And, they were damn good paddlers for their first trip!) Paddling through the confluence of the Snake and Salmon rivers was a lot of fun - reminded me of sea kayaking on a rougher day with the standing waves and wind combined with some weird (for a river) currents right around the confluence area. Hadn't tried a ducky before this trip, think I'm more of a hardshell guy, but they're fun fun!

One of the guests shooting Snowhole Rapid (the decent size ones are often named)
She flipped half a second after that shot, but hung onto the boat and the paddle - bravo!

Once we were on the Snake River (after the confluence of Snake and Salmon, the Snake continues on,) things got a little different. Snake is a dam regulated river, so the level fluctuates by quite a few feet. Rather than just casually tying the boats to a rock or whatever, I had to make a pretty substantial deadman anchor to tie off to. Another reason for the big anchor is that jet boats (damn them) like to bring big boatloads of tourists up the river at considerable speed (and noise,) kicking up wakes that can make life interesting. Also, we started seeing more development along the river on the Washington side. There had been wildfires too (cross reference, although different section of the same river,) and when you get wildfires around development, you either get burned out homes or examples of wildfire fighting techniques. That's something else I want to do... Anyways, it was neat to see where they had dropped some retardant ("drop the retard!") to save a few houses from the fire - it's the red stuff:


We eventually got to the pull-out, where we were met by Kurt and his truck. The guests took another shuttle out, then we got to lugging everything out of the boats and into the truck, breaking down and deflating the boats, and getting everything strapped down for the ~4 hour drive home. Unpacking, cleaning, and putting away everything went fairly quickly with something like 6 of us working on it, then we went home. Clair and I got cleaned up and went to town for dinner (one of the best pizzas ever!) then by the time dinner was over, it was bedtime.
Fawn - kindof like Bambi. It was actually one of several on the trip, but happened to have the camera out for this one.

The next morning, I got my bike stuff packed up, and Clair gave me a ride back to the route. On the road again!

Fun sidetrip!

Didn't Drown!

Another quick post - just got back from the river trip earlier today! Had a really good time - we had four guests, who were pretty cool and very helpful. Neat scenery, fun conversation, exciting rafting, good weather, and getting to hang out with my friend Clair - all around fun! Would post more, but it's time to get food!

McCall, ID

Ended up pushing out a long day yesterday and made it to New Meadows last night, the closest town to McCall on the transamerica route. Called up my friend Clair and got a ride over to McCall just as it got dark out! Beautiful ride yesterday, decent climb first thing, a fun downhill on a very quiet old windy road, then the rest of the day was cruising along the Salmon river.

Lazy day today, taking care of random errands around town and eating food. Tomorrow, we'll be getting ready for the trip and leaving McCall, then actual river time begins the morning after that! Might get some pictures from the last few days posted on here sometime in the next few days, but forgot to bring my camera into town, so that's not going to happen right now.

Kooskia, ID

So, been riding my bike some more. Got a late start out of Missoula, left around noon, but made it up and over Lolo Pass before camping. Naturally, the pass was over-hyped, and wasn't that big of a deal. Nice ride up and over! The route parallels a river most of the way up, so there's neat scenery and the grade is very gentile. Saw a helicopter picking up loads of water to dump on a nearby forest fire, but couldn't see the fire from the road. I think I want to give the smoke jumper thing a try at some point :). Took a nice break at the top of the pass, then went for a very nice coast down the other side! The terrain is noticably different on the Idaho side of the pass - much like I had imagined the Pacific Northwest would look like. Not sure if I'm technically in the Pacific Northwest or not, but the scenery sure is nice! Waited out a thunderstorm with some spectacular lightening, but not much rain, at a little lodge type place, then rolled down the road to camp. Found what appeared to be a staging area for fighting fires - noticed it through some trees from the road.

Hit the road earlier than usual this morning, nice riding for the most part along a river all day long. I'm in Kooskia right now, but thinking I might go visit the laundromat, then head on a little down the road to camp at a place with free camping rather than staying here in town. We'll see what happens!

I should be getting to McCall this Friday, then heading off on a raft trip, so this might be the last post for a few days.

Another deadline!

Bought my plane ticket home - should be getting back to Boulder on the evening of August 8th!