Eastern Oregon – Final Thoughts
We did it. We made it back home. There was definitely some “Oh no, what have we done” moments, and some thoughts of quitting early, but in the end we made it back home and overall it was a fantastic experience. Oregon is absolutely stunning, and what better way to experience that beauty than by bike. Seriously, some things just feel different when its just you and your bicycle amidst all that grandeur. We earned that beauty.
The Eastern Oregon region was so much more diverse in its landscapes than we expected or really understood. Several people had mentioned the micro-climates to us before we left and we thought we understood what they meant with stream beds and sun/shade faces of mountains etc. But what it means was actually so much more complex with pine forests, meadows, and desert all knocked up next to each other just on the other side of the hill. It was really cool to experience the changes in how things looked but also how things smelled and sounded. Smell was a much larger part of this experience compared to the Pacific Coast where everything was dominated by the ocean. You can’t smell all those unique scents from your car either! All in all we love the scale and pace that bicycle travel gives you and this was a great land to visit and spend time with.
Favorites
Angela’s favorite section to ride was part of the Old West Scenic Bikeway. The northeastern section between Bates and Long Creek (Day 13). The variety of scenery including the Middle Fork of the John Day, the meadows, the ponderosa pines, and cool rock features all in a confined area impressed me. And mostly downhill riding didn’t hurt either. The scenery reminded me of the Mickelson Rail Trail in South Dakota we did a while back, and I truly would be interested in going back to re-ride this entire Bikeway.
Andrew’s favorite “spot” of the trip was the beautiful meadow between Tipton and Sumpter Pass. It’s along Highway 26 as part of the TransAmerica Route. (Our days 10 & 13). The juxtaposition of scenery after the tough mountain climbs just created a super peaceful vibe that made for a fantastic resting spot. It was amazing to see the large meadow land dotted with flowers between the forested hillsides beyond.
Least Favorite
It’s unfortunate that the Willamette Valley Scenic Bikeway was our least favorite. We had honestly been looking forward to riding it home, hence why we saved it for the end. I think our issue mostly lies in the scenic bikeway route itself. It had a bunch of arbitrary jogs that didn’t seem to avoid traffic or add any views or ammenities. Honestly making our own route rather than following the signed route would have been better. But you don’t know until you do it. We likely won’t be riding that area again anytime soon, but if we do, we will either skip parts entirely and just take a train, or make up our own route that’s maybe a little more efficient, or optimizes interesting features (such as specific towns, or a river ferry).
Gravel
Neither of us had ever done a true gravel tour. We’ve done some Rail Trails (like our trip along the Katy Trail across Missouri) and some day riding on gravel, but never anything of the same magnitude of what we tackled this trip, and certainly not in this manner. The Outback and Overlander were both spectacular trails, but they kicked our asses (Day 4 – 7). Not having a whole lot of gravel experience, we didn’t realize how much more difficult it would be. We were used to our daily miles of road riding, and struggled to dial in what was doable for us when we were riding on gravel. And because this trip was mostly road riding/touring we were relatively heavily loaded for the gravel portions increasing their difficulty.
The photos we took on those remote gravel routes were absolutely stunning, and some of my favorites. The feeling of having all of that grandeur to ourselves was also unreal. It did pose problems when we were exhausted, hot, and low on water, but man that beauty couldn’t be beat.
I would 100% like to go back and at least do the Overlander route – but next time planning on “roughing it” more with what we bring. So it will be a much shorter trip and we will pack much lighter. And we will assume shorter milage days in trying to plan out sleeping locations so that we don’t accidentally over commit ourselves again. The nice thing about the Overlander route as well is that we could go back and stay at the Spoke’n Hostel in Mitchell, OR. Pat and Jalet are a real treat, and I wish there were more amazing bike hostels like theirs in existence!
Gear
This had been our first lengthy tour on single bikes. With the tandem, we never really had a whole lot of options in terms of what types of bags we can carry, or where to store stuff. It’s also easier to pack ‘one more thing’ when we’re BOTH carrying the load.
One thing we’re realizing after this trip is that different trips require different setups. We tried to combine gravel and road touring into one grand Oregon trip. Which is all fine and dandy, but when we personally like to pack camping comforts for a long tour, it sure does make that gravel riding difficult. There was also a fair amount of stuff we had brought and used on our Pacific Coast trip, that just weren’t applicable on this trip. We are hoping to pair down our clothes a little on future trips. For example we did not need as many long sleeve options, and while yes we whipped out the rain pants for one day, they were mostly dead weight on this trip.
There will also be some tweaking to our bags, but mostly out of some dislikes/annoyances from our current setups. But it will be interesting to keep planning out more trips and watching as our gear evolves with us and the types of rides we do.
Health and Fitness
After trips like this people always ask about the “butt“. Honestly I didn’t have any issues. I had one day where the seam on my chamois (bike shorts) was rubbing weird, and Andrew had some slight chaffing. But honestly if you find a good saddle/chamois combo you really shouldn’t have any issues. However, when we got home and started riding the tandem around in regular clothes – that’s when I started having butt soreness! (We’ve moved saddles around since our Pacific Coast tour. We’ve also been working on swapping spots on the tandem and the saddles are definitely not dialed in for that yet!)
Angela:
Our very first multiday tour I blew out my knee with patellar tendonitis, an over use injury. It was bad, and now every future tour I always have that memory in the back of my head. I think it holds me back from ever trying to go too far. Even our long days on this trip, I always wanted a bailout option before I agreed to go further. If I start to get any pain in my knee I tend to freak out and start looking for a place to stop for the day so that I don’t cause any serious damage to it. Leading up to this trip I definitely didn’t train as much as I would have wanted to, but at least since moving to Portland I am on a bike a lot more frequently than I had ever been in Kansas City. Thankfully, the increased day riding seemed to be enough for this, because other than a few whispers of pain in my knee I really didn’t have much issue this trip.
Instead, I developed some shoulder pain this trip. Turns out my upper body strength isn’t that high, and when you do a front loaded gear setup, but don’t actually train that way, your arms won’t be too happy about it. Luckily my shoulder pain never concerned me in the same way the knee pain does, so I was generally able to tough it out – but I will definitely try to focus on more upper body strength before our next single bike tour! I do like the front load setup.
In the photo you see of me laying down, I was actually suffering from some weird side stich cramping. Laying down seemed to be the only relief from it. I would ride a while, lay down until it went away and repeat. I think it’s a posture related thing I need to work on – but fortunately that pain only happened one day!
Andrew:
On the health & fitness front I had a few struggles on this ride. Very early on, around Day 2, I noticed that something was feeling a little off around my ankle & Achilles tendon which unfortunately never really resolved itself throughout the trip. The pain/twinge just sort of moved around and I spent a lot of time on the bike worrying that I was over-compensating and going to hurt something else. I was able to manage some of the issue by adjusting shoes and replacing insoles as well as liberal application of Tiger Balm and Vitamin I(buprofin) but there were several points that I was genuinely worried about my ability to continue.
Now that we are home I am hoping lighter rides and rest will help everything heal up. Beyond this “injury” we both faired very well, albeit with tired muscles at points, and with the exception of Day 4 we never felt that our own fitness or strength was the limiting factor in our riding.
Tandem Vs Regular Bikes
I know I know, you all are wondering, but what about Twolula!? She’s still hanging out with us, and we still plan on taking her out on future adventures. We’ve actually been rocking the tandem recently around Portland since our bikes needed some professional lookovers/tune-ups after all the roughage we put them through. Angela has been practicing her captaining skills, so we’re thinking maybe taking the tandem out on another rail trail/bike path type trip and playing seat swapsies for the ride.
As far as touring in general, there are definitely pros and cons to each bike configuration. This route we just did would have been awful on the tandem, so I’m glad we didn’t try it. The gravel and hills involved would have been even more exhausting on our tandem. But there were times when one of us were dragging and it would have been nice to be attached to the same bike rather than each have to pull our own weight. Just like how we’re finding that different routes call for different gear, I think the tandem and whether or not we choose to take it will depend on the ride itself.
Since Captaining a tandem takes a lot more of a mental toll than stokering does, Andrew wanted to include some of his thoughts specifically:
For me [Andrew] the trade offs on tandem vs single bikes for tours are hard to balance. I enjoy being able to ride exactly in the style I like to ride in rather than compromising and aiming to keep both Angela & I comfortable, happy, and safe. Single bikes also gave Angela the freedom to take snack breaks or stop for a picture whenever the fancy struck her, something that will occasionally illicit a groan from me on the tandem. But on the tandem I also got really used to knowing exactly where my riding partner was because we were physically attached. There were many times I would ride faster or more aggressively up or down a hill, then notice Angela was no longer in my mirror and wait anxiously to see Angela ride up. Fortunately only once did I have to go back because she hadn’t shown up after she had gotten a flat. I’m sure it will sound sappy but I also really missed “feeling the other person in my pedals” on this ride; it’s not just the ability for one riders energy to support the other but just constantly feeling the slight changes in pressure with your feet makes for a very unique experience of interconnection which riding side by side doesn’t seem to match. But also managing a fully loaded tandem on the road and on the sidewalks is a pain in the butt! So having that mental load removed from me made the time off the bike more enjoyable and easier to engage with.
Budget
Being the type-A people that we are (fitting since that’s also our initials), we do like to keep track of a lot of things, such as how much we spent.
Our overall “on tour spending” came out to $2,534.68.
Surprisingly enough it was almost down the middle between food ($1249.86) and lodging ($1094.09; $800 of which was toward the eight hotel/hostel nights). The last $184 was spent on some bike repairs in Baker City and a few pharmacy type items. Overall we were under what we budgeted for – it’s a lot harder to find ice cream shops when the towns are few and far between.
If you ever wanted to do a similar trip there were plenty of opportunities we could have brought the budget down by camping for free on public land, but we sure like those toilets, trash cans and picnic tables, so we usually opted to stay at campgrounds. We only had 1 night on this trip where we didn’t pay for sleeping.
By the Numbers
The flats were a real energy sucker. After having ZERO flats on our 57 day Pacific Coast tour, and then coming to this and basically having a flat a day for the first two weeks it was just awful. Our spirits were high most of the time, but dang you can only take so much mentally. Now that we are home I am excited to be switching my tires to tubeless – my bike is in the shop to get upgraded as I type this. (Learn it from me, don’t take Gravel Kings on any sort of adventure ride where there’s even a whisper of goat heads).
We were honestly surprised at how few beans we ended up eating. Both of us predicted that we would eat more cans of beans than days riding. Turns out, beans aren’t as appetizing when it’s hot out. (Although adding the sun-dried tomatoes to the refried bean burritos were a real game changer, albeit a little messier).
We were also surprised at how many other bike tourers we saw out and about. We left for this trip on Memorial Day, so when we saw a couple tourers heading home probably from a long weekend tour in the gorge, Andrew decided he would keep track of how many we saw. We both joked that the 12 we saw on Day 1 would be all we saw the entire trip. Turns out Central / Eastern Oregon is a great place to find other people traveling by bike! I also didn’t realize how many people do the Trans America Route – even excluding the racers we saw, it’s still a lot.
16 nights camping; 5 nights in bike hostels; 3 nights in hotels.
We didn’t keep track of how many snakes we saw this trip (no rattlers that I’m aware of at least) but in the game of “Is it a stick or is it a snake?” the answer is almost always “road debris”.
I enjoyed the “Before and After” aspect of these shots. Our bikes and bags definitely got a lot of love on this journey.
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adventurepdx
Congratulations! Despite the issues, it looks like a great tour! I do need to get out to Eastern Oregon again at some point…
And I would say don’t give up on the Willamette Valley for riding. Yeah, the bikeway is meh, but there is some cool stuff to be explored off of it, especially in the more northern reaches. Though with my just-done “tour”, I will say that the ferries are cool, but have backup plans in case one or two decide to stop running the days you intend to use them.