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| Date | Starting Place | Ending Place | Author | Last Update |
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| 07-18-09 |
Unity Lake State Park, Oregon, United States |
Vale, Oregon, United States |
ray | 09-24-20 10:57:39 |
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I got up at 6am and had a banana for breakfast. I packed up, waited 15 minutes for the sun to dry the tent bottom, and was off about 7:30am. My plan was to get a "real" breakfast in Unity, 5 miles away. Unity is a tiny town. Here is downtown.  It has two cafe/bars and a convenience store.  I stopped at the first cafe I found. This was a bar with a food menu and the single older woman there couldn't quite keep up. The place had 6 motorcycles when I pulled up with my bike. It took a while for the waitress/cook to recognize that I had come in and for me to realize that there was a menu other than the few things listed on a whiskey bottle sitting on my table. I order the Spanish Omelet and it was well below what I could have made myself. I also had some coffee after one of the other patrons went behind the bar and made a new pot. I also ordered a grilled cheese sandwich for the road. As I left the cafe (after checking email on a free wi-fi signal from somewhere nearby), I saw the Eldorado Ditch restaurant. I remembered that Rose had told me to skip the first place and eat there for good food. Sadly, I remembered too late. I was on the road by 8:30am. Leaving Unity, I was again in the desert. While I was prepared for it, I found this sign a bit unnerving.  The route went up and down for a few miles through desert brushland.  After about 5 miles, I entered a Unity Forest State Park, an oasis in the desert where I saw grassland, grazing stock, and water.  The road meandered along in a kind of valley.  Then, I began the climb out of the state park.  It seemed that I was always riding next to some bit of water, either lakes, reservoirs, rivers, or streams. Even in this desert, I could see water.  One the way out of the valley, I saw these colored hills. It was the only place I saw them.   I got to the top of Eldorado Pass (4623 ft) after moving into the next time zone.  After the pass, I coasted further down into the desert. It was very hot and the land barren. At the Unity cafe, I had loaded my pack with ice and it was keeping me cool and the cold water really helped. I stopped often to apply sunscreen or rest. There was no shade, none. I was reminded me of the long, uninteresting roads I had ridden on my tour to Phoenix.  At one point, a woman pulled up next to me, rolled down her window, got my attention, and told me it was 106 degrees. She paused at that point and then said she hoped I had plenty of sunscreen. I was taken aback by a car slowing to bike speed next to me on this desolate road. Staring at her, I thanked her for the information and asked if she had any extra water, though I didn't really need any. She didn't. We continued slowly down the road and she told me that the Brogan Hill summit was just ahead and then it was downhill from there. Her "just ahead" and mine were not the same and I didn't hit the summit for several more miles like this.  I was struck that I couldn't see any trees.  There wasn't any sense of accomplishment at the Brogan Hill summit. Just relief that I could stop pedaling for a while.  Not needing anything, I blew through the town of Brogan without stopping.  After the summit, the road went steeply down for several miles. It got hotter and more desert-like. On the way down, I would be hit with searing blasts of air like I had ridden by the open door of a hot stove and then it would be gone. I wondered what would cause a pocket of such hot air. There was brown everywhere I looked. Riding up this grade in the heat would be dangerous. After more gently rolling up and down, I got to Willowcreek, essentially a store/gas station about 45 miles from Unity.  It was way too hot to keep riding so I planned to spend some time there to let the heat of the day dissipate a bit and to get some shade. There is a snack bar that only offered meat meals. I asked the woman if she could make be a big salad and she did. It had lettuce, carrots, olives, onions, and tomatoes. It hit the spot. While I ate, a local, eating chicken nuggets, told me about his military service and disability in Iraq. I got a slurpie drink and walked outside where 2 older men were drinking beer and talking. For some reasons, they had to be served a can of beer instead of buying it themselves. About every 15 minutes, the woman would come out with one for each of them. It was clear they had had several before I go there. We all got to talking while they kept drinking. It was interesting to share time with locals catching a buzz on a hot Saturday.  After while, about 4 beers worth, an older woman came by and starting telling stories. She had recently gotten a ticket in the mail for not paying a toll on a bridge in Washington state on a recent trip. We tried to come up with arguments she could sent in instead of the $52 dollar fine. She was spunky and quite funny. She, then, started talking about her tattoo and one of the guys said "Not the tattoo, again." She told me the story after I asked. It was a hummingbird in memory of her sister who had recently died. It was a touching and well-told story. I took a picture of the tattoo.  It was about 4pm and I was anxious to get on my way. It was still very hot and I had another 20 miles to Vale, my goal for the day. In retrospect, I should have stayed at the park in Willowcreek. It had a nice grassy area, a toilet and some shade. But, I was driven to continue on. While the wind was behind me, this also meant that I didn't feel any breeze as I rode along. It was very hot, the sun unrelenting, the scenery uninteresting and the miles dragged on. I arrived in Vale tired after 68 long, hot miles. I quickly found a dumpy motel room for $30, rested a bit in the cool room, showered, and took a walk to the nearby store for yet more Rainer Cherries and a saunter around "town."  Vale is full of very nicely done murals celebrating its pioneer past.    I returned back to the motel, cooked up two packets of Ramen, and some broccoli, carrots, and celery. I watched some TV to try and get a weather report and learned that this day was an all-time record for temperature in Boise by 3 degrees! It was, in fact, 106 there. I went to sleep shortly thereafter. |
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