Thursday, September 13, 2012

CYCLE OREGON Day 3 - Prospect to Ashland

The start of the day was COLD. We had frost on our tent and we had to get an early start to cover the entire route with the amount of elevation that was in store: 6,800 feet! Over 88 miles.

The 5:45 wakeup wasn't bad until we got on our bikes at 7:15 and we were happy to have feet warmers, even though they were not completely doing the job! I failed to wear tights over the shorts I had and that was a serious problem.

It warmed up after the first 15 miles, but that was a slow start due to the numbness in our extremities.

One more fun note was that as I was packing up the tent I realized it was going into the bag more easily then the previous days. Well that was because the rain fly was still on the ground.  Oops!  And that was where all of the ice was! Two options: unroll the tent and repack or stuff the tarp in on the side. Option 2 was chosen and let me just say that the nearest experience of doing this that I can think of is rooting around in a cooler for an ice cold beverage for 2 minutes solid. My Hand was Fuh Reez Ing!

We made the trip to the Crater Lake Rim Drive with 45 minutes to spare, so we were safe to continue our riding. Apparently, the permit limited access to the early hours and 11:00 a.m was the cutoff.

Crater Lake was as advertised,  I had a hard time pulling my eyes away from the deep blue of the Lake. The terrain posed a challenge and the elevation took us to 7,700 feet.

Pictures to come.

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