With everything cold and wet, we were not very long getting ready for the road. There is not much conversation when the conditions are pretty lame.
I was wearing most of my cycling clothes as we headed out to climb the pass that would be the start of our day and they would all stay on throughout the day.
The drizzle continued and occasionally got stronger as we went up the mountain. Eventually, we were high enough again near the top that it turned to snow.
Snowy and wet for this one
It was wet and miserable and the sky ahead gave no indication that it would be different the rest of the day. I put one more layer on before starting the descent from the pass and down we went. It would be slightly downhill for the next 30 miles. Normally I would be excited by this but today it just meant cold, cold toes, cold fingers, cold ears.
After ten or fifteen miles I was just about at the point of wondering if my numb toes were getting frost bitten when I saw a building with an "open" sign by the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. I didn't care what kind of place it was, I was pulling over to go inside.
Pleasantly, it turned out to be a small restaurant on the bank of a river miles from nowhere. In addition to hot drinks, we decided to have breakfast again. Big, warm pancakes.
There was a porch out back along the river with hummingbird feeders and more hummingbirds than I have ever seen.
Small but impervious to scrappy weather
After warming up for about an hour we headed on down the road. The plan was to get to the next town on our map and get better information about the weather forecast. At this point, neither if us were excited about spending the next several days in the rain with wet gear on roads in the middle of nowhere.
We were getting into some of the lowest elevations of the trip now but still experiencing the worst of the weather. 30s and 40s and heavy rain.
Getting pretty low to be this cold
We got to the town of Idanha and found a shop with a friendly owner and wifi. Sure enough, the rain is expected to continue in this area for the next few days. No chance of drying anything out if we continue this route. After yesterday's shortcut debacle and the thorough soaking we are getting today, we decided to alter our route and get out of the mountains early. Since we have already decided to travel up the west side of the Cascades, we will just start now. If we can't get out of the rain, we can at least get to some towns to dry off a little instead of being in the middle of the woods.
Where the change began
I bought an Oregon road map and we plotted our route (all on paved roads). We won't be stopping early to sit around in the rain so we we will pedal a long day today. With another full day tomorrow we should be able to get to Portland.
No more Google maps
Having made up our minds, we headed out into the rain again. After another few miles we gave the finger to our original route and kept pedaling towards Salem.
Haven't been this low since Day 1
Down the road we visited the covered porch of a Ranger station for lunch. Not being rained on for a bit felt like quite a luxury. The luxury bar is getting pretty low today.
Do I really have to go back out there?
We needed to get in at least 70 miles today to have a shot at Portland tomorrow. When we got to the town at 70 miles it was still raining heavily so we decided to keep going. I had decided at this point that I would keep pedaling until we found a dry covered location to dry my gear or we found a motel.
The door was locked so we kept pedaling
It was another 15 miles down the road before the rain stopped. We pulled into the small map dot of Sublimity, OR and looked at options for drying our gear.
Sarah's disgusting(favorite) wet snack
We found a nice park with a covered picnic area and a little bit of sunshine. Almost everything came out of the bags and was hung around the place to dry. We were really looking like homeless vagrants at this point.
First dry spot of the day
Eventually everything was mostly dried out and we started to think about where to spend the night. Sarah's favorite thing to do is camp in public places and all I cared about was dry so we decided we would camp in the park. The picnic pavilion was covered and had electric outlets and a restroom. Pretty good.
The forecast was for more rain overnight so the covering was important. We packed up our dry gear and took a short trip around town to see what was open (nothing). We spent some time reading in a church parking lot before returning to the park.
We met a fellow and his family biking through the park and had some conversation about our trip. He was excited by it and offered the use of his dryer for our gear. It was a little late but appreciated. He thought we should just camp in the park as he was sure nobody would care. Good idea!
It was a little breezy so I set up my tent, crawled inside and went to sleep. The alarm was set for an extra early start so we would be out of there before too many folks came by.
First class...remember the bar is low
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