Written by Dave

Day 7 – June 4 – 76 Miles, 3,040 feet climbing (near Redmond to Mitchell)

Normal programming resumed today. Luckily not every day is as epic as yesterday. Still, it was a longish day and we all felt yesterday’s climb in our legs.

Everyone slept well at Andy and Jenny’s place. We were lucky enough to end up in their Volkswagen Vanagon. It was very quiet and I was the only one who could be blamed for snoring in the van. Surprisingly there were no complaints this morning from my van mate.

Andy revved us up with brekkie and some strong Peterson coffee.  We got away from his place, with him escorting us, around 8:30. We met up with Curtis in town after he broke from the group last night to stay with his uncle. Andy ended up riding with us for about 50 miles but the best part was his escort through town so we didn’t have to deal with navigation.

Our first highlight of the day was the Crooked River valley between Redmond and Prineville. This route parallels Highway 26 but has less traffic, some nice escarpment views and distant views of the famous climbing area at Smith Rock. The only issue with this route was the gravel yard’s big trucks going in both directions but to be fair, they were mostly patient and waited for a clear pass on a somewhat narrow road.

Andy told us that we could make an early lunch at 11AM in Prineville but we didn’t believe him. He proved to be very accurate as we pulled in right on schedule. I don’t think we would have had the same result had it not been for our old friend the tailwind. It was our 6^th day of riding and our 6^th day tailwinds – wow. We had lunch at the sandwich shop in Prineville and everything was quite tasty.

From lunch we had today’s big challenge, a 3,000 foot climb to the top of Ochoco Summit. The climb was very gentle and the tailwind made it fairly straight forward. There were a few pinchy bits but overall it was a cruisy ride to the top. Andy turned around after 50 miles and rode 20 miles back to Prineville where Jenny was giving him a ride home. He reported that the wind was not his friend whatsoever on the way back to town.

Chris was feeling his legs from yesterday and took his time reaching the summit. Nancy and I scooted ahead to suss out the hostel situation. There is a race across America (unsupported) going on and the hostel was “closed” for three days to support the racers. We saw a couple of the leading riders the last two days and arrived at the hostel as a racer came in. They gave him the royal cow bell treatment, but he said the start of the race had been terrible, probably due to weather. They started in Astoria on June 1 and had to ride through those rain days where we hung in the cabin.

With the hostel being full/closed, we moved onto the city park where they allow camping. It’s been improved a little since we stayed here in 1992. They have nice covered tables and even hook-ups for 5 camper vans. The showers at the mercantile have also been improved, no longer having a 10 degree sloped floor that it had when we were here in 1992. We had dinner at the pub and are now back at camp. Tomorrow is a shorter day which is welcome after the last two days. We are headed to Dayville and the only real obstacle is the first 8 miles and a steep climb up to Mitchell Summit. Chris is keen to call it a mini-rest day and heck, if that gets him up the 8 miles, we’re all happy to do the same.