(June18– written by Dave)

31 Miles – 1,316 feet climbing

We moved to Portland, Oregon in 2025 but didn’t have much time for bike trips. We were bound and determined to rectify this situation this summer. Portland is a prominent west coast Amtrak (train) hub, which creates a bunch of possible routes that start or end at Central Station in Portland – ride bikes from here to a distant station and then catch the train home, or hop on the train in Portland with our bikes and ride them home from where ever the train spits us out. No planes, no bike boxes, no TSA and no automobiles – sounds like a perfect bike trip to us.

We knew we wanted to take a trip sometime this summer but until this week, we didn’t really have a plan. The 7-day forecast looked good, so a spur-of-the-moment ride to Crater Lake looked possible.  Campgrounds on the way seem to still have openings. Plus, just beyond Crater Lake we can catch the train at Klamath Falls, the most distant Amtrak station in Oregon. Since riding our bikes to the pristine, magically blue Crater Lake has slightly higher cachet, that’s what we’re calling this trip. No offence to the good people or town of Klamath Falls, I’m sure they/it will be lovely as well.

We’ve mapped out a route to the south end of the Willamette Valley at Cottage Grove, up into the Cascades, through Diamond Lake, Crater Lake and finally onwards to Klamath Falls. We’ll have 7 nights camping with no less than 4 nights at “no-turn-away” hiker/biker camps. The nice thing about no-turn-away camps is that we don’t have to make bookings, giving us flexibility if we have weather or timing issues. If the spirit moves us, we can even give the tent a night off and grab a room somewhere.

Our route today took us from our home in Portland out to Champoeg State Park. It was a pretty short ride but it’s the first time we’ve ridden load touring bikes since 2024 when we Chris Crossed the USA with Chris. It’s always good to give yourself a short day to get used to the weight and the loaded bike wobbles. Good news, within a mile everything felt great. Even the uphills were fine. As they say, “it’s just like riding a bike” – sorry, bit early in the trip for Dave jokes.

We had about 10 miles ride out through Hillsdale, Multnomah Village, Tigard and Murray Hill before we finally reached Roy Rogers Road. There was a proper bike lane on all the roads but it’s mostly 4 lane, heavy traffic with stop lights – slow and careful riding was required. Roy Rogers Road is the same as far as the road goes but the scenery dramatically changed once we reached it. Roy Rogers forms the western edge of the Portland Metro urban growth boundary. To the west it’s fields and hobby farms, to the east its wall to wall houses and apartment blocks. There were big fights in these parts back in the 1990s over the necessity of the growth boundary. We are sure glad that the pro-boundary folks won. It’s nice to have some wide open green space so close to Portland.

After about 15 miles we left the back roads to join super busy Highway 99. The shoulder got even wider so other than more noise, it was mostly pleasant enough. Soon after joining 99 we came upon the Red Berry Farm fruit stand. It would be hard to say that we had earned a morning tea stop but who can go past a farm berry stand without stopping. We had a nice iced coffee, marionberry scone and at Nancy’s insistence, a marionberry donut – not two of each, rather we split one of each between ourselves – as noted, morning tea was barely earned and we’re not gluttonous after all!

We rode HWY 99 back in 2017 on our way to Argentina and remembered a big climb after the berry stand. Score one for touring with lighter set-ups these days because neither of us could believe that we’d reached the top of the climb when we did. There was a tail-wind but all the worry about the climb was misspent – it was easy-peasy.

Before long we reached our planned lunch stop at Newburg. We were still full from morning tea but knew that they wouldn’t let us check into the campground until 4 so we stopped at a cafe for a nice, leisurely lunch and coffee stop. I definitely did not earn the cinnamon roll that I ordered but somehow convinced myself that having a fruit salad as well balanced out the scales – it probably didn’t.

It was only 8 miles from lunch to Champoeg State Park and our planned stop for the night. More tailwinds made this easy riding as well. We are planning on tent camping most nights of this trip but they had an open Yurt at the park so we decided to splurge and to sleep in their tent, instead of ours. I’m not sure how good of an idea that was as it’s pretty warm in the yurt and it only has a fan, no A/C. I think out little tent might have been more comfortable – we’ll see how the night goes.

We met two younger solo bicyclists at the park hiker/biker area – one gal and one guy. We had a nice visit with them while learning that we are sharing some of the route forward with the gal – Gwen. Meeting young touring cyclists always makes us feel better about the world – it means that there can be a future for bicycle touring, but also, that not all young folks are glued to their screens and/or stuck in the global news doom loop.

We’ll have dinner here in the yurt and see what we can do to get some air moving inside. Tomorrow is barely longer than today but we’ll have a lot more country riding. Tailwinds are forecast again – what could be better than finally getting out on a tour AND having tailwinds?