(June21– written by Dave)

36 Miles – 1,388 feet climbing

We were up early at Armitage Park, too early for my tent mate but when you go to bed at 8:30, 5:30 doesn’t seem so early. This morning we had blue skies but there’s a hill just east of the park and the sun never actually hit our site before we left. The tent was pretty dry so we just packed up and headed towards Eugene downtown.

We decided to have one more cafe brekkie today as we’re heading into more remote areas tomorrow and don’t know what we’ll find. It was an easy 5 miles from the park to downtown along Coburg Road’s cycle lane. In fact, until we left the southern end of Eugene, we pedalled either in cycle lanes or proper off-road bike paths. Got love Eugene for its bicycle infrastructure. We had wonderful egg and bacon biscuit sandwiches and passable cortados at Magpie’s Cafe. Two other things that are easy to find in west coast college town.

We left Eugene on Dillard Road and right away we were in for our climb of the day. I think we hit 12% at one point on the 2 mile climb but all and all, it was not too bad. Near the bottom, we were entertained by a baby deer and mother wandering onto the road. The baby was so small it looked like a Chihuahua more than it did a deer. It could barely walk with legs going every direction on the pavement.  Eventually, mom got it off the road and it quickly sat down in the tall grass on the edge of the road. We were only a few feet from it as we passed but mom was clearly stressed so we just rolled past. A photo or two would have been nice but we settled for knowing it was there and let mama relax.

Once off Dillard Road, we turned south on an I5 frontage road. It was a little narrow but what little traffic there was on a Sunday morning gave us space. It was only 20 tailwind miles to Cottage Grove but we still didn’t gripe about finally having some of the famous Willamette Valley north winds – 20 miles is better than nothing.

We stopped at Safeway in Cottage Grove for a big resupply. We have 4 nights ahead where we don’t know what we’ll find in the way of food. Nancy made a list and I did the shopping. It took me a really long time as one of our choices for food was boil-a-bag Indian food and they had none. We’ve left the “green west coast vibe” of the Willamette Valley and entered the more conservative parts of Southern Oregon. I substituted the fixings for a green chicken Thai Curry but it took a while to gather everything. Don’t worry, I got the butcher to wrap the chicken in ice and we’ll eat it for dinner tonight. No raw chicken will be consumed tonight or later!

It was only 8 miles from Cottage Grove to Baker Bay campground. Most of it was along the Row River Bike Trail, a rail line converted to multi-use path. We’ll get to ride a bit of it again tomorrow morning, more nice work from Lane County on taking care of us non-motorized road users.

Baker Bay is a funky campground. It’s on Dorena Lake and as such is a popular get-away for boaters and water loving people from the valley. It used to have showers and running water. Now it has port-o-potties and no showers (should have read the website a bit more closely). The folks running it are nice and we have a great site right on the water. Once all the day-trippers have headed home it should quiet down. The sheriff just put his patrol boat in the water, so I’m guessing that some of the water hooning will die down sooner.

This won’t get posted for a day or two as we have no internet, or phone signal tonight. If it never gets posted, that means that the ice/chicken thing didn’t work and we’ve died from eating raw chicken. This is truly a post I hope everyone gets to enjoy.