Day 35: Oregon!! (and some extra miles)

Today everyone was up early and ready to go pretty quickly.  Ron had his road bike and would be riding with us for the start of the morning.  It would be his chance to get an up close look at the touring bikes in the road and get in some casual exercise.  We expected it to be much slower than his typical ride.

Today would also be the last riding day in California.  We would be in Oregon tonight and not headed south again.  It has certainly been interesting to see all the variety in California but I am ready for a new state.

We headed out of town and once over a little rise, enjoyed a slightly downhill cruise for several miles.  After that, the road leveled out to flat or slightly downhill and we enjoyed easy cruising.  We were very near the interstate at this point (I-5) so there was virtually no traffic on the side roads we were traveling.

Mt. Shasta above the plains

We were keeping up a much quicker pace than typical for our morning ride as we were all charting away.  It was good for making distance against the 80 miles we would need to put in today but in the back if my head I was still thinking we needed to save a bit for a long climb that would come at the end if the day.

Great cruising grounds

We have seen plenty of share the road signs along our trip and other indications that folks are aware of bicycles on the road.  It was funny then to see alongside an ideal biking road, sign of active anti-biking sentiment.

It takes some effort to be that cranky

Somebody went through a fair amount of effort to create the road tread stencil used on that sign.  Fortunately, we continued to see others that were more friendly down the road.

Share the road...with giants on bikes

Ron ride with us for about two hours by which point we had covered  just a bit more than 30 miles.  It was quick for us.  We stopped at a convenience store (only one cold drink for me) and visited just a bit longer before we headed out and Ron headed back.  By then we had exchanged several messages with Randy who continued to be a day behind us.  We gave him Ron's location information at Mt. Shasta and passed along his offer of cold beer and a spot for a tent.  Hopefully they can connect later tonight as I am sure that they would enjoy swapping stories.  Randy has been putting in some long days to try to catch up but some of our days have been longer.  Hopefully we'll see him after our Ashland rest day.

One of these is not like the others

After leaving Ron, we headed down the road a bit and stopped at the next town to top off our water bottles.  We had also entered the world in which I have cell phone coverage so I became aware of a couple of messages that needed answering.  We stopped at the gas station in the tiny town of Montague.  In addition to folks on bicycles, it is also the sort of place that caters to folks that ride up on horses.

Bike parking and horse parking

We continued to make good time and by the time noon rolled around we had clocked our furthest distance by noon to date, 56 miles.

Oregon is out there somewhere

We grabbed lunch in the shade of a post office as it was getting quite hot.  Unfortunately there was nowhere to top up the water bottles so that started to become a concern as we would now have a 14 mile climb before getting to Ashland.

Reminder: conserve some water

The first 8 miles of our climb would be done directly on I-5.  This was not ideal but there were no other road alternatives.

The sign of bad things to come

After the first mile or so I thought it wouldn't be too bad, just noisy and smelly.  By the end I had decided that it completely sucked.  Very noisy and tense the while way.  Eventually I realized that my headache was from clenching my jaw so tightly that it hurt.  I wasn't even aware I had been doing it.

However, just before we finished the highway climb we crossed into Oregon.  Of course that meant a short hike off the road to be silly in front of another sign.

Oregon welcomes you...to jump like a fool

Eventually we got off the highway and completed the rest of the climb.  We had to stop a couple if times for shade and dehydration breaks.

The road down into Ashland was a really nice, twisty downhill that was very helpful in forgetting about the interstate slog.

At the bottom of the hill, while I waited at an intersection for Sarah to catch up, three touring cyclists passed by.  Fun to see as we hardly see any.  When Sarah arrived, she said we should catch them and so off we went.  We were riding faster than they were (maybe all that mountain riding has helped a bit) and soon caught them.

We immediately began chatting.  They were finishing up a 6 day trip to Crater Lake.  I was able to learn that the rim road is open for bikes although still closed to cars.  Eventually we were chatting so much that I wasn't paying attention to where we were.  By the time I moved back to consult with Sarah who had been doing the same thing, we realized we had passed our camping destination.  We pulled over and the others disappeared down the road.  I pulled out my phone and figured out that we were about three miles past our target.  We turned around and headed back, super excited about the extra 6 miles added to the day.

After setting up camp and having our dinner, Ferrit and his sister arrived.  They have been camping but they do it a bit differently.  The tent stays on top of the car and the food stays in a refrigerator in the back.

It's like camping but different

They then cooked what would be our second dinner (and first warm one in quite a while).  It was super tasty.  I laughed when they pulled out a briefcase sized container that was just for spices.  I tried to impress them with the mustard packets I picked up at a convenience store (Grey Poupon even).  They were not impressed.

No thanks, I have a week old mustard packet

Dinner was great and after borrowing some laundry detergent, I did a load of laundry and headed for bed looking forward to sleeping in.

Tomorrow I will stay in a motel in Ashland and explore town a bit.