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Monday, July 20, 2009
Triangle Lake to Eugene, OR
Via Hwy 36, secondary roads and bike path. 40 miles. We completed our crossing of the Coastal Range today, during another beautiful ride among the green hills of Oregon on another perfect weather day.
We are in Eugene tonight, a town of about 140,000 people in the central valley between the Cascade Mountains to the east and the Coastal Range to the west. It is also the home of the University of Oregon. As you might expect, this is a very bike-friendly place. We rode from the outskirts into downtown on an wide and very well-maintained bike path that allowed us to avoid virtually all of the traffic one would expect to encounter in traversing a city of this size.* We also saw tons of other people on bikes, but virtually all of them were obviously riding from one point to another in town, around the U of O campus, etc. I don't know why that surprised me. Why wouldn't you buzz around town on a bike rather than pay for owning and maintaining a car, when statistics show that the average errand trip distance is only a couple of miles?
We've continued to meet extremely nice people although we have noted that Oregonians tend to be a little different. There seem to be a fair number of "free spirits" living here (ex-hippies, survivalists, people that tape over the slogan on their car's license plates, etc.) For example, a woman we met yesterday in Deadwood (yes, this is not South Dakota), who had a very faraway look in her eyes during the entire conversation, described the 'slippery rock' area of the creek at the Triangle Lake campground as "a little trippy". (What she meant is that you could be seriously injured if you weren't careful and/or had too many beers prior to sliding [in very fast moving water] down and off a rock slab into a churning pool filled with other large rocks.) Another guy we met today at the gas station/C-store in Low Pass (who looked like he had not shaved or bathed for an extended period of time**) worked himself up into a froth about how much of a danger local drivers are to "bikers". When he finally realized that we were not riding motorcycles he stopped instantly, picked up his purchases and left saying only "have a nice day".
*Eugene isn't exactly a major urban center, but it is the largest city we'll traverse on our way back to Colorado.
**Although I had not shaved in at least a week and we had slept in a tent last night, we felt positively fresh by comparison.
Florence to Triangle Lake, OR
(Ridden July 19th). Via Hwys 126 + 36. 41.4 miles. We kicked off the second part of our trip today with a spectacularly beautiful ride from the Pacific coast up the Siuslaw River valley. The weather was a perfect Colorado-type summer day with bright blue skies and warm but not oppressively hot. We were treated to mile after mile of green hills, the clear blue water of the river, massive pine trees soaring overhead all with very little traffic (it's too bad every day can't be a Sunday). It was a pretty steady climb all day, with a steep section at the end, but nothing we had to struggle over.
We managed to find a camp site in Triangle Lake, despite the sign announcing "Campground Full". (The woman who manages the place told us she always saves room for cyclists since we don't always have the option of just going on to the next town. In this case there are no motels or even other campgrounds for at least 30 miles. And, she told us, she has found that cyclists are good tenants.) We are camped alongside a stream that is a popular place for families to bring their kids to play in the water (which is only a couple of inches deep here). Just below our camp site is "Slippery Rock" where older "kids" can slide (on a tube or otherwise) down a long rock 'slide' into a good-sized pool. With the ideal weather the place is packed today with people actually sliding and onlookers (generally older folks who have learned that they are mortal after all). We are definitely in the latter category but are really enjoying this place. The only downside is that the ground water has sulfur in it. While it's fine to drink it smells bad (they call it "fart water"). Oh well.
We managed to find a camp site in Triangle Lake, despite the sign announcing "Campground Full". (The woman who manages the place told us she always saves room for cyclists since we don't always have the option of just going on to the next town. In this case there are no motels or even other campgrounds for at least 30 miles. And, she told us, she has found that cyclists are good tenants.) We are camped alongside a stream that is a popular place for families to bring their kids to play in the water (which is only a couple of inches deep here). Just below our camp site is "Slippery Rock" where older "kids" can slide (on a tube or otherwise) down a long rock 'slide' into a good-sized pool. With the ideal weather the place is packed today with people actually sliding and onlookers (generally older folks who have learned that they are mortal after all). We are definitely in the latter category but are really enjoying this place. The only downside is that the ground water has sulfur in it. While it's fine to drink it smells bad (they call it "fart water"). Oh well.
Scene along Hwy 126 between Florence and Mapleton, OR
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