Oregon Tour 2014 Day 7: Albany to Champoeg State Park

Clover field near Keizer.

Rousting ourselves up from our nondescript hotel's beds, we first hit the equally mediocre breakfast bar with the usual suspects—clientele as well as cuisine. Slammed a feeble cup of Joe (Tom Waits covered it in his song Eggs and Sausage: My veal cutlet come down, tried to beat the shit out of my cup of coffee, coffee just wasn't strong enough to defend itself) and a pastry—or I think it was a pastry—and hit the road. 

When I envision a trip like this, I usually plan on camping most nights. It's a major reason I undertake unsupported bicycle tours (tours where you carry all your gear on the bike).  However, if we were to do a boring old hotel tour, we could carry much less gear. Conversely  when you schlep a hundred pound bike up a 20 percent grade all day, you damn well want to have a reason for it. 

Of course, trips don't always work out the way you plan them, especially on a loaded touring bike, subject to the whims of mother nature. An extreme example of this is a 250 mile tour Pat and I did across Missouri on the Katy trail, 2009. It was so hot that week—over 100 degrees and humid every day—we never camped out once, and actually contemplated UPS-ing our gear back to Des Moines at one point. So I was especially looking forward to camping tonight; ain't nothing like cooking your own grub on a camp stove, quaffing a beer or two while contemplating your luck at being able to do the very thing you were doing, and sleeping in your own digs without worrying about the hotel duvet's pathogens. And of course the best part of camping, in my opinion. is coffee in the morning.

Today was another 60 mile day, again on the Willamette Valley Scenic Bikeway, with but one comparatively insignificant 800 foot climb. Usually, by this time in a tour, you're really quite fit, and used to the daily 6-8 hour shift of pedaling, slipping easily into a kind of meditative state.

This was shot leaving Albany, a working class and economically depressed town about a quarter the size of Des Moines. Despite their small size and lack of economic well-being, they had significant bike facilities such as these lanes leading us through town and onto the open road. This, in part, reflects the state of Oregon's bicycling infrastructure efforts, but the locals have also bought into it. Great to see. 

Today's landscape would be primarily hop and clover fields, this one near Independence owned by Rogue Brewing Company.

I edited out my thumb as best I could. Obviously a shot taken on my phone and not my camera, where that can't readily happen.

These Scenic Bikeways are a mixture of dedicated bike lanes, paths, and quiet roadways. Quite frankly, I'd take this every time over a drop-dead gorgeous coastal route jammed with traffic.

Hop fields near Keizer. These plants will grow to the tops of these crazy tilted phone-pole looking trellises. This being only May, they have a ways to go.

Full Sail isn't a bad label. They have a tasty pale ale, as I recall.

Gratuitous shot of loaded touring bike, for no apparent reason other than my hands were free or something.

The explanation for this was already taken, making it doubly gratuitous.

Getting near our campground in the Aurora area.

A tidy little park.

Standing by my beloved MSR Hubba Hubba tent. If you want a florid extolment of this particular piece of kit, click here.

We ended up at about 60 miles for the day. We made a wrong turn and had to backtrack a few miles. As you can see from the elevation profile to the left, the last two thirds were down hill or pretty damned flat. All-in-all, quite an enjoyable, penultimate day of touring. Tomorrow we have to figure out how to navigate into Portland.