(June25– written by Dave)

66 Miles – 1,834 feet climbing

No bicycle trip of Nancy’s is complete without at least one pancake brekkie. Even though we’ve been carrying lots of oatmeal, Nancy talked me into heading over to Annie’s Restaurant for a last morning treat. We sat at the same table as we did for yesterday’s jumbo hotdog but today, Nancy stuck to the script and got the pancakes. They were “ok”, not amazing, but at least that box got ticked.

From the restaurant we had 12 miles of glorious descending down Annie’s Creek watershed. We stopped at a couple of the viewpoints and enjoyed the ride. It was probably only 50F this morning so we were a bit rugged up and climbing would have been better temperature-wise but nobody was complaining about the downhill.

At the bottom of the canyon we were spit out into the Upper Klamath ranch lands, complete with big open grasslands, barns and lots of cows. We stopped a viewpoint in the middle of the first meadow to look back up towards where Mt Mazama once stood. We were standing at the level of the bottom of the current lake. Mt Mazama, before it blew 7,000 years ago, would have been 6,000 feet higher than the highest point you can see in the photo below. It would have made quite a ruckus for sure.

As we were on the east of the Cascades Mountains now, we halfway expected the grass to give way to sage brush. We were completely surprised when we looped over to the western side of the valley and had about 20 miles riding through the Fremont-Winema National Forest. The road had a great shoulder but there was little traffic. We took a cut-off from the highway on Rocky Point Road and got to enjoy some views of Upper Klamath Lake. We stopped for early lunch soon after the end of Rocky Point at a servo on Highway 140, the Falls Highway.

Falls Highway turned out to be a bit of a slog. We rode it for about 20 miles and had great shoulders on the part climbing over Doak Mountain. There were about 8 miles of zero shoulder. And I mean zero, the white line was painted in the dirt. Traffic was mostly polite and somewhat light but a couple yaboos in big tired 4x4s had to gas us and/or give us the horn. We were already on edge and even pulled off into the soft sand shoulder once before a big group of cars overtook us. Somehow, out in the middle of nowhere, we found a random bike lane just off the highway at Running Y Ranch. It kept us off Falls Highway until we reached the much more appropriate Shore Line Road which took us all the way to downtown Klamath Falls.

We didn’t miss the Falls Highway, but we did miss the welcome to Klamath Falls road sign. There’s no big waterfront or marking for Klamath Falls so we settled for a nice Main Street cafe and a late second lunch, iced coffee and a chocolate milkshake. On the way off to our B&B, we spotted a perfectly painted building to get a celebratory photo. A woman, who we later learned happened to be a judge in town with lots of good tips for places to eat, was walking past and happily took our photo.

We are staying at The Klamath Inn – with wonderful host Lynn and her dog Ida. Both Lynn and Ida were very happy to see us and made us feel right at home. Lynn and her husband just took over the Inn – we think we’ve found our new home for breaking up the long drive to Nevada to see friends and family.

After showers we wandered back to downtown in search of one of the Judge’s tips. The first two turned out to be odd, one just a beer garden, the second a 1960’s steak house with crew of the actual 60’s working there. We eventually landed at the Judge’s first choice which we should have listened to in the first place. We had a stunningly good meal, with appropriate celebratory beverages at the Basin Martini Bar. So now we’re set for a place to rest AND eat when we make our next drive to Nevada. Almost makes the drive sound fun!

That’s it for our ride south, almost. We have to ride south about a mile tomorrow to reach the Amtrak station. We’ll then have 7 hours on the train before a 5 mile ride home in Portland. We’ll see about a wash up post once we return to Portland. Thanks for riding with us from Portland to Crater Lake, er, make that Klamath Falls.