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.

Day two is our big climbing day. We started at about 1000 feet in Oakridge, then up up up through the 5126 foot Willamette Pass, then only down a few hundred feet to Odell Lake.

We spent just about the whole day on Route 58. Like Aufderheide yesterday, it’s a relatively narrow but straight road. Unlike Aufderheide, it’s got pretty heavy traffic, including big semis carrying all sorts of cargo. Fortunately, the shoulders were wide enough for most of it that we were able to stay out of everybody’s way, without any close calls. We did see one other touring biker today, coming from the other direction. As we got higher up, we noticed that incoming traffic tended to come in waves, which I guessed was from some slow truck backing things up when there wasn’t a passing lane.

Ame found us a side road with a bridge to sit on for lunch again. Today’s was less isolated, as several cars drove past. The bridge was wide enough that we didn’t have to move, though.

At about 4000 feet, we came across our first (and I think only) tunnel for this trip. Anne was concerned about it – the book we got the route from describes it as dark and with debris in the shoulders. The author evidently got a driver to go right behind them, acting both as a road block and to lend the use if their headlights.

It turned out not to be a problem. They’re doing construction on the tunnel, so its down to one lane shared between directions. They also were closing the whole thing for 15 minutes at a time between letting traffic through. This solved the mystery of the bunched up traffic.

For some reason, the construction dudes didn’t want to wait for us to slowly go through the tunnel, so we got rides in the pilot truck – a pickup truck driven through first each time to make sure everything is clear. We couldn’t fit the three of us, our bikes, and the trailer at the same time, so it took two trips. With the 15 minute holds between letting traffic through, it took quite a while. We chatted with the flagger and pilot driver while we waited. They wouldn’t let me use their port-o-potty, though.

Just after the tunnel, on a tip from the driver, we stopped to look at Salt Creek Falls, a 286 foot waterfall. It was starting to get late, and Ruth hadn’t napped yet. When we were getting ready to get back on the road, she kept telling us to “stay this hotel.” It took some convincing that there was no hotel there, and we needed to keep moving. then she napped for the rest of the ride. Anne pointed out that she naps better in the trailer than she did on the drive up to Oregon.

Around the same time, we saw the top of Diamond Peak, the first snow capped mountain of our trip. It was quite a sight, poking out of a sea of trees.

Finally, we made it to the summit. We snapped a quick picture, then enjoyed an all too short descent to Odell Lake.

Alright, made it through the first day of the tour! Tomorrow has more climbing, but today was supposed to be the longest time in the saddle.

We started off fairly promptly, and immediately went over (or is it under?) a covered bridge. Anne was very excited, although less so when I pointed out that the sign said this particular structure was built in 1966.

Then it was off to Aufderheide Dr, aka NF-19. There was a fairly gentle climb up to Cougar Dam and Cougar Reservoir, which made for our first sightseeing stop.

We followed along the reservoir for a while, then started on some rollers generally up. I knew we should eat lunch before it changed to a steady climb, and Anne found a little side road with a bridge for us to sit on.

Then up up up to the top. The climb wasn’t too bad — maybe our training is paying off. One ride report I had read claimed it had a 12% section at the top. It certainly didn’t feel anything like that. At the top is Box Canyon, which seems like a funny name for a meadow. It certainly was interesting to walk a few steps away from the thick wall of trees into a grassy, flowery clearing, complete with some historic log cabin.

Then it was time to go down. Well, sort of. There was a short down bit (complete with squeals from Ruth), but most of the descent was something like 1% down, mixed with 1% up. So it didn’t really feel like a descent. I had been looking forward to coasting the rest of the way.

The road was very straight today. I don’t think we had a single switchback, and almost all the turns were gentle. Up until the end, there was almost no traffic, maybe one car every five or ten minutes, plus a few motorcycle caravans. We only saw one pair of bikers, close to the end, and they weren’t touring.

Anne was so excited about descending without dealing with sharp blind turns that she offered to take the trailer down. So she ended up with it all day. Yay Anne!

The road was pretty heavily forested, and we were never far from one river or another. Every mile or so, there was a waterfall coming down the hill to feed the river. Some were pretty big, and some you could only hear. In the morning, it sounded like a nature CD you’d put on to help you relax. Rushing water, birds calling, an occasional rustling on leaves. In the afternoon, the wind picked up, whistling the trees. Sometimes the rivers were loud enough that we couldn’t talk.

We were on NF-19 almost all day, and the little side roads were named NF-19xx, starting at about 1985 and counting down from there. I amused myself by pretending we were in some kind of time vortex, with exits for different years as we went further and further back.

Oakridge, our destination for tonight, is a small town, but instead of being quaint, it just kind of feels decayed. In the three blocks to our motel, we passed three permanently closed restaurants and a couple of empty storefronts.

Ruth did pretty well today, at least until near the end. By then, though, Mommy and Daddy were wearing out, too. She knows how to buckle herself into the seat now. We do sometimes have to bribe her with food to get the helmet on. She enjoyed looking at the river, and dipping her toes in with Mommy.

Animal sightings: a deer family (according to Anne, I wasn’t around the corner yet), some kind of eagle, assorted other birds, some flat snakes, and many dragonflies, butterflies, and less attractive insects circling us as we made our way down the road.

Mechanical problems: when we stopped at some point, Anne’s bike fell over, and one side of her helmet visor snapped off. We use our helmet visors to hold mirrors, so it’s actually pretty important. We ended up using a zip tie to hold the visor, which seems to be working,