Written by Nancy

Day 12 – June 9 – 73 Miles, 2,750 feet climbing (Baker City to Oxbow)

We were up early this morning, trying to get on the road early to avoid too much climbing in the heat.  The hostel is all one big room, so we all tiptoed around trying to eat our breakfast without waking our hostel mate, Stephanie. She was so quiet coming in late the nights we were there, none of us heard anything.  We tried to repay the favor this morning but I expect we were not as successful as she was! 

We had a small climb out of town, and considered riding up the steep hill to the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center outside of town but knowing it was closed swayed everyone to just look at it from road.  We had some beautiful views of the mountain ranges outside of Baker City, many of them still dusted with snow. We rode alongside the Powder River for awhile, but then had to climb away from it on the way to Richland.  Our first real climb wasn’t too bad, and we had some cloud cover to help moderate the heat.

In Richland we had a mission – to meet up with a wonderful gal who we first met up in Dot Lake, Alaska.  Julie was the principal at the small school in Dot Lake where we stopped on a cold day in May 2017 at the beginning of our North-South America trip.  She and her band of kids warmly welcomed us, fed us delicious smoked salmon and provided warm showers and a safe place to set up our tent.  She now lives in Richland, Oregon, and we were passing right through on our route today.  We texted her from the grocery store on the main street and she came down with one of her kids, Kaylee, to meet us.  We had lots of fun reliving our Alaska meet up and hearing about all of her current projects – wow, she is one busy woman!!  She tried to give us a couple of jars of her precious canned salmon but we couldn’t really take the glass jars and we didn’t want to take any of her few remaining jars of salmon.  Thanks so much for coming out to meet us Julie – and good luck with your projects!

Leaving Richland we faced the big climb of the day, just under 6 miles with a pretty steady grade of about 6%.  There was not a tree to be seen, so the heat was pretty intense at times.  Plus, it was one of those climbs where you could see the road way up the hill ahead of us, so you knew just how long you still had to climb.  But, we all made it there in the end – at least there was a summit sign, though it was unnamed.  From the top we had a bombing downhill to get us to Halfway, our intended stop for the day. 

We reached Halfway around 1pm.  The accommodation options didn’t look spectacular and we knew Oxbow Park was 17 miles away, mostly downhill.   It looked like there was a nice campground in Oxbow, so the decision was made to keep riding and hope it worked out at the campground.  We picked up some supplies for dinner and headed out of town.  It was mostly downhill, so Chris went to the front and we all scrambled to keep up with him.  Dave finally asked him what the heck he had eaten in Halfway!

The campground at Oxbow turned out to be a beautiful spot, and we snagged a nice site that accommodates all of our tents, for all of $16.  There is water and warm showers here as well, and lots of nice people about, so it was a good decision to carry on.  We had a spot of rain after we set up our tents and were cooking dinner, but it never got too much so we just carried on with our meal.

After dinner we walked across the Snake River bridge. This took us into Idaho and then back to Oregon when we walked back. Idaho seemed fine. We were only there for a minute so we did not adjust our watches. Tomorrow we will have to move our watches an hour ahead when we cross a different bridge some 5 miles upriver. The rain has blown through now, and the white noise from the nearby Snake River should mean a good sleep tonight.  And that would be a good thing, as we have a pretty decent climb tomorrow through Hell’s Canyon.  Chris is really looking forward to that…