Eastern Oregon – Day 11-13; Returning West. Baker City to Lower Camp Creek

Day: 11 – Filled with Uncertainty
June 8, 2023

Distance: 2 miles (425 total)
Churchill School, Baker City

Today was filled with uncertainty. We had left our bikes at Trailhead, the local bike shop, overnight not knowing if they could fix Andrews broken spoke.

We spent the morning planning out alternative options and doing some laundry. Brian, one of the hostel owners mentioned he may have a spare wheel that maybe matched Andrew’s bike that we could borrow to get home so we maybe also had a backup plan in place.

When 10 am rolled around the Bob at The Trailhead, the bike shop, called with bad news. They did not have the right type of spoke. We mentally resigned ourselves to catch a bus, but moved on to plan B asking if Brian could find that spare wheel so we could see if it fit Andrew’s bike. Turns out Brian had already traded that spare wheel to someone else in exchange for roof work so it was no longer an option. In an upswing of emotions, before we had a chance to figure out a bus plan, Bob at The Trailhead had come up with an idea to make Andrew’s bike rideable. He would take a longer spoke and cut it down to the right size. Huzzah! A working wheel again!

Brian gave us a ride to the bike shop (with a detour to cheer on the next Transamerica racer coming through town and to offer them a burger, which coincidentally he turned down, and since Angela was the only non vegetarian in the bunch she took one for the team and ate the juicy burger so it wouldn’t go to waste, sometimes it’s rough being an omnivore).

At the bike shop we had a minor scare when Andrew noticed the weird creek in his bike was still there, but after a lot of playing with it we found it to be his fender and rack rubbing. Phew. All that has been sorted. The adventure continues! We even got some sealant added to our tires which SHOULD help with all those flats we’ve been getting. Fingers crossed.

We do have a little bit of mixed feelings in regards to continuing; this ride has certainly been challenging. We both have aches, and the bike spoke was almost a good reason to quit without having to actually “quit”. Don’t get me wrong, the sites are absolutely amazing, and the scale of everything is inspiring, but it’s just been way harder than we remember the Pacific Coast ride being. I think we figured out why everyone left “the old west”.

We’re hoping we can overcome the challenges we’ve been facing to make sure we’re having more first order fun in addition to all the second order fun. We’ve talked through some of the main challenges mostly being the afternoon heat, and are going to try and get up earlier to beat a lot of the heat and take longer afternoon breaks (although tomorrow it’s actually supposed to be raining and cooler so Wah Wah). At least we’ll finally break out some rain gear we’ve been lugging around. Maybe.

Today is technically a rest day, but we did ride our naked, so very light, bikes to the grocery store to stock up for tomorrow’s riding and then back to the bike hostel. So a couple of easy miles but not entirely off the bike.

We ended up going out for Mexican food with our hostel hosts Corrine and Brian. They had fresh delicious chile rellenos that we all enjoyed.

As we were leaving the restaurant a TransAmerica racer, Abby, was coming through. She’s staying at the Churchill School bike hostel tonight so we rang cowbells for her and then escorted her to the school. It was interesting hearing insight from a racer, although tragically she was having some neck pains and wasn’t doing as well as she had hoped because of it.

Tomorrow we’ll head back west towards home, more or less the same way at first, but we plan to stop at Sumpter, an old gold mining town, so it should be a short hopefully easy day to get us back into the groove. We’ll save those hard climbs for the next day.

What We Ate

Breakfast: Oatmeal and coffee
2nd Breakfast: Noodles with dehydrated veggies
Lunch: Burger for Angela; peanut bar, and almond butter burrito for Andrew
Dinner: Chile rellenos burrito for Angela; mushroom enchiladas with a chile relleno on the side for Andrew
Snacks: Vegan jerky, naked juices, chocolate bar, granola bars, fruit snacks

Day: 12 – The Hunt for Gold
June 9, 2023

Distance: 30 miles (455 total)
Baker City to Sumpter

Per our resolve, we woke up earlier today. We were both a little nervous to go out into the wilderness again but eventually we did get out the door.

The morning started with a soft drizzle. Perfect riding weather. Until we were maybe 5 min in that is, then the skies opened up and released the rains upon us. We finally broke out the rain gear. Well just the jackets, we probably could have left the rain pants at home.

Fortunately the hard rain only lasted for maybe 10 min. Then it was back to beautiful cloud covered mist. Oh how we’ve missed you. Now, when these East/ Central Oregon towns brag about having “over 300 days of sunshine” I just think ‘that sounds hot’.

Since the ride was mostly going back the same way we had come 2 days prior there wasn’t anything crazy exciting to see. It was neat seeing the trees and river all misty and foggy instead of how it had looked last time through though. We also waved at mile marker 38, where Andrew had changed our latest flat and pushed on. (So far the sealant in the tires seems to be working).

Eventually the rain did start to pick up again. We were getting pretty damp, and it was no longer pleasantly cool. We had already planned a short day, so it was nice to pull into the town of Sumpter around 11 am.

With it actively raining and showing no signs of stopping, we decided we would treat ourselves to a motel (who cares that we haven’t camped the past two nights either?). We got one of the last rooms at Fort Sumpter Motel. The motel aesthetics are super fun/kitsch, there’s a fort wall around the outside, and we’re in like a little cabin room.

After warming up and changing we went to explore the town on foot. We walked over to the dredge, a massive industrial gold mining machine. It basically wreaked havoc on the landscape, but found a lot gold in the process. It flipped the natural rocks and topsoil upside down, so now there are these huge lines of river rock piles left over from when it was used in the early 1900s.

We went back into the main part of town for lunch, opting to eat at the cafe where we were also able to enjoy some delicious ice cream.

On our way back to our room we swung by the Sumpter museum (and attached public library). For an old boom town, it was actually a pretty good museum with a lot of neat stuff.

The afternoon we mostly spent chilling/napping and relaxing. We ended the day with dinner at the Elkhorn saloon hoping for pizza because why not, we’re on vacation. But to our disappointment, apparently pizza is only on Thursdays, so we ended up eating healthy salads for dinner, since all the other options were meaty.

What We Ate

Breakfast: A banana and some leftover pizza that The TransAmerica racer didn’t finish
2nd Breakfast: Half an almond butter burrito with banana chips
Lunch: Grilled cheese, fries, clam chowder (Angela), potato salad (Andrew), and much deserved ice cream
Dinner: Strawberry, blueberry, feta cheese salad with Texas toast.
Snacks: Bars, fruit snack, trail mix

Day: 13 – Double Pass Rematch
June 10, 2023

Distance: 47 miles (502 total)
Sumpter to Lower Camp Creek Campground

Thanks to the rain the previous day everything was cooler today albeit a little humid as well. Our bikes were a little damp, and we had some already rusty chains! We lubed them up, but we’ll probably need to give them a proper cleaning when we have a chance.

Revisiting the Sumpter climb today didn’t feel so bad on fresh legs, but it was definitely still a long climb.

We took a break at the same meadow between the Sumpter and Tipton climbs to enjoy a second breakfast. While we were wrapping up, a west bound Transamerica tourer caught up to us and stopped to chat. We rode with him for a little bit, but he left me in the dust on the climb. (Andrew probably could have kept pace, but was kind enough to wait for me at regular intervals.)

When we got back to the highway 7/ Bates intersection we drank a bunch of water and topped our bottles back up at the pipe spring. There was a local there filling up some big jugs, so we chatted for a little while before parting ways.

It was finally time for new riding scenery again. We turned onto the North side of the Old West Scenic Bikeway. It was really nice mostly downhill to flat riding. Once again we’re following our old friend the John Day River, though this time we’re going down the middle fork.

We stopped for lunch at Deer Horn campground where we enjoyed hummus wraps by the river. Recently my fender had developed an annoying rattle, so we took a little extra time trying to quiet it down. Unfortunately our efforts didn’t entirely solve the problem but maybe it was at least a little better.

There was a brief moment where Andrew thought we could make it to Long Creek (80miles with 3 different 1000ft climbs!) I did at least entertain the idea until we stopped for lunch, at which point I decided to shoot it down entirely. Luckily we had found a random camp 1.5mi off of the main route the night before so we had an option at a more reasonable distance, although we did still get to camp fairly early in the afternoon.

The ride today on the scenic bikeway was amazing. We still had a lot of the ponderosa pine forests, and several very pretty green meadows with interesting rock features every once in a while. The traffic was also minimal, we maybe saw 5 cars for the 20ish miles after we had left highway 7.

Lower Camp Creek Campground is a nice little primitive campground about 1.5 mi off the main route. There are a couple other car campers here, but overall very serene and quiet. We get to use our water filter again from the nearby creek.

Andrew tried to fix some of my minor bike woes: we maybe finally got rid of the fender rattle, but now my dynamo light doesn’t work. The wire came detached from the spade and we can’t fix it with the tools we have on hand. The woes of technology.

What We Ate

Breakfast: Oatmeal and coffee
2nd Breakfast: Peanut butter burrito with banana chips
Lunch: Avocado, hummus wraps with cherry tomatoes and cheese
Dinner: Loaded mashed potatoes with chives, cheese, sun dried tomatoes, vegan jerky
Snacks: Bars, Snickers, fruit snacks, wasabi soy beans,”roar” drink

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