Today was a milder ride. We rolled up and down the same couple hundred feet over the course of 47 miles.

We started with a short “warmup” to climb back up to Route 58 from Odell Lake. Then just a couple of miles to Crescent Junction, where we stopped at a gas/grocery/tackle store (though Anne thought it should be tackle/gas/grocery) for breakfast and lunch supplies.

Then on to the Cascade Lakes Scenic Byway. This was a very nice road, with light traffic (and almost no trucks, though plenty of RVs and towed boats). For parts of it the shoulder was actually a nicer biking surface then the main road.

The first half had nice rolling hills, mostly at 2% or so – enough to notice, but not enough to make you suffer. On the downhills, we took turns racing each other, usually without telling the other one before speeding off and declaring a winner.

At a quick pit stop, we noticed something just off the road. It was a dead eagle. Don’t worry, America, it had a brown head. No bald eagle sightings today, living or otherwise.

We did, however, see a bear. It was crossing the road a couple of hundred feet ahead of us. It was long gone by the time we got there. To make sure we didn’t sneak up on any of his friends, we sang songs for the next mile or so.

We stopped for lunch near the site of the Davis Fire from 2003. We’ve seen small areas hit by fire over the last couple of days, but this was pretty massive – a sea of bare trees, just starting to show signs of recovery. A pair of touring bikers on recumbents stopped to chat for a few minutes. They were headed in the other direction, so we warned them about the tunnel construction we hit yesterday.

The afternoon was less fun. It got hot, there was very little shade, and it was mostly uphill. The grade was still shallow, so it’s hard to complain too much, but it’s still less fun than going down. On the plus side, several attractive mountains featured prominently on the horizon.

I started to notice a popping sound coming from the road, and little black shiny balls on the road. Anne called it the pop rock road. At a stop, Anne determined that it was tar, bubbling out from the chip seal road surface. As we rode over the bubbles popped.

Tomorrow is a rest day. It will be good to give our contact points a chance to recover, let Ruth run around at the lake, and maybe rent a boat. Then, on to Bend.