Wutheringbikes Home -- TransAm Bike Ride
<< >>

Thursday 19th August 2004

panoramic view of the cascades
From Ochoco Lake campground (National Forestry Service) to Lava Lake Campground (or Lava Lamp Cakeground, after a bottle of the local brew!) - a distance of a about 65 miles (almost all of them uphill). Went across road from the campsite to get breakfast - which sadly was not the usual mass of carbohydrate rich food, but frankly rather small (the pancakes were the smallest we've seen so far). Anyhow, after this, and a quick visit to the Lake, we finally set off. It was a short run to Prineville where we had a second breakfast (required due to the smallness of our first breakfast). Then we headed on through a long wide dry canyon to Redmond. The day was hot and sunny, and the riding seemed easy. Redmond is another of those towns in the midst of a real estate boom - so everywhere seemed to be offering little places for only a very reasonable price (ho ho). We headed rapidly out of Redmond and over to Sisters. Before reaching Sisters we had the good fortune to pass the very pleasant Kline (Cline?) Falls - where Steve had a swim in the river and we ate lunch. The water was just right, not too cold at all. It's a popular place for a river swim on a hot day. As we got near to Sisters the mountains seemed particularly impressive - all the peaks of the Cascades were spread out to north and south - something like the panoramic photo above (click on the photo for a more detailed photo - 750Kb). Sisters was OK - it's the kind of place that would rather sell you a scented candle than food or drink, so it's not really that much use to someone on a bike, but it does have a decent grocery store (Ray's, just after the turning for the McKenzie Pass that we were going to take). A heap of food was bought since there's not much at the campground at the top of the pass. We headed up the pass in increasing gloom as the sun set. We got a bit confused by the campground sign - it said 'Lava Camp Lake' - well, is that the campground sign or just for the lake? Steve preferred to read the sign as "Lava Lamp Cake" anyway. So we ignored it, reached the top of the pass and realized that we should have taken the turning. We finally reached the campsite in semi-darkness. There's no water at the campground so we had only 1.5litres of water each, but that's enough. The night was so black that it was very easy to see huge numbers of stars - I don't think we've ever seen the milky way so visible as from 5000 feet up at the Lava Lamp Cakeground. Wonderful. It was also wonderful to have an excellent salad, with olives and red wine, in such a remote location.

Wutheringbikes Home -- TransAm Bike Ride