Written by Dave

Day 9 – June 6 – 62 Miles, 3,304 feet climbing (Dayville to Bates State Park)

(Posted June 7, at camp none of AT&T, Verzion or T-Mobile, our combined networks, had signal. This gave us the night off-line and some spectacular stars last night)

Today starts with last night. After I posted, just about when we were ready to head off for dinner, up rolled John, one of the Trans-Am racers. John sussed the place (and us) out and decided to call it a night. He’d ridden 110 miles but was still full of energy. Like Raf, whom we met earlier in the day, John was super positive and full of great stories. He grabbed a quick shower and joined us for dinner (and more stories).

While at dinner, Stan a third racer rolled by. We were tracking his dot and knew he was coming. He was also super positive and happy to be in the race. Stan did the race last year and this year his first day total mileage was 150 miles less than last year – due to the rain and no tailwinds. He had every reason to be a little surly but no way, none of these guys were willing to dwell on anything negative. I guess that makes sense if you’re racing your bike for 30 straight days. Talk about great ambassadors for cycling and ultra racing – well done guys.

As for today, none of us slept great in the church – there was general agreement that a sleeping pad works better on grass than it does linoleum. Naturally John was up early and true to form, he took the hard floor in a positive light. Thanks again to the good folks of the Dayville Community Church for hosting us.

We broke “church” a little before 8AM and had a very nice morning ride through the John Day River Valley. All the hills and fields are stunningly green and made for a number of nice photo ops. The Strawberry Mountains, with their tops still covered in snow, were showing off for most of the day.

Our first stop of the day was for morning tea at the Mount Vernon servo/mini-mart. I caught Nancy buying, no, make that eating, the first six pack of Hostess white powdered donuts of the trip. I caught her just in time, before she started eating any of my 3 donuts, but it was close (Senior Editor’s note – I was only going to eat my share). We took our drinks from the servo down to the state park just outside of town where we also helped Chris change the first flat of the trip.

We made a quick water stop in John Day followed a few miles later with another stop in Prairie City for lunch. We found a mini-mart that served fresh BBQ meats for lunch and everyone ordered their own sandwich. Wow, that was crazy – we could have shared one between two people with ease.  Adding insult to injury was the fact that we had a 9 mile climb up Dixie Summit right after leaving lunch. It was over 90 degrees and the climb was quite steep in a few places but a nice viewpoint half way up gave us a welcome break. We would have liked to done that climb in the cool morning air but it didn’t work out that way.

After photos at the summit, we had another ripper downhill that would ultimately take us all the way to camp. We stopped 1.5 miles before camp at the Austin House Café for lemonade and milkshakes and to get the skinny on camping. Had they had rooms, we might have stayed – I asked. Thankfully the downhill lasted all the way until Bates State Park where we spent the night.

The camp is nice but there are no showers. They have tens of sprinklers running and lots of nice grass. We agree to snap up a campsite for $11. They have hiker biker sites but they are $8 per person. Figure that out – 5 bikers at the hiker/biker site for $40 OR $11 for the five of us in one normal site. Only 2 of the 28 other sites were occupied. We took advantage of a sprinkler at the very far end of the camp for cold cowboy showers, which was really a treat.

I think we’re getting better at figuring out how to make meals for the 5 of us as well. Tonight we had spaghetti with pesto, asparagus, tomatoes and even a can of chicken spam like meat. Don’t knock it until you try it!

Tomorrow we’re off to Baker City and a welcome rest day on Saturday. It just happens to be Oregon Trail Days in Baker City so we’ll have plenty to do and see on the day off.