Day 53: DayVille OR, to Prineville OR

I don’t remember what time I woke up but everyone else wanted breakfast in town. I still had food from yesterday so I ate that. (eating canned clam chowder turned out to be a bad idea later). Packing up I realized I couldn’t find my tent. Since we were sleeping inside I didn’t set it up last night. The church wasn’t that big so it didn’t take me that long to check everywhere. The Norwegian brothers woke up and helped me look. They were super nice and even showed me their stuff to prove they didn’t have it. I didn’t remember having it last night but I didn’t remember having it either. I guess you could see something was wrong on my face cuz everyone asked me what was wrong in town. Everyone went back to the church and looked again. But it was just gone. I looked at my pictures from yesterday and saw I had it before Dayville on the giant covered wagon. So unless it was stolen at Dairy Queen, fell off my bike or the other girl last night stole it, my tent had disappeared. To say the least I was kinda upset. Evan and Jolee were the sweetest and bought me some skittles to cheer me up. It was so nice that I wanted to cry. The first 30 miles or so was a steady climb along the ‘traveling through time’ highway. Normally I would have been super soaked to bike along such a cool geological feature. The town, Dayville, I learned was named after the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument.

Although still put off at the loss of my tent I couldn’t help but think this is exactly somewhere my geology classmates would want to visit. The sign for the ranger station was about 4 miles off route and went down a dirt/gravel road so with a sad face I decided not to visit the ranger station. The monument went on my list of things to visit again. The ‘traveling through time’ highway didn’t last long and soon we found ourselves along a steady incline. When it seemed like hours had past I checked my map to see how much further. It seemed like I was only just over halfway, with 13 miles left. Maybe the ‘traveling through time’ road was actually making time go slower. I did run into the others around this cool tree. Of all the trees this one was the most creatively decorated. I was tempted to leave one of my shoes but as the one ones I had were the ones I was wearing I decided against going barefoot.

After a while the climb flattened out for the most part and I found myself biking along a kind of plateau. I passed a sign that said 13 miles to Mitchell. ‘No way’ I thought. The descent into Mitchell was 6 miles so that meant there was still 7 miles left. For some reason that didn’t feel right but everyone else said yeah…it’s a long climb. Brent was waiting for us at the top and we joked he probably had time to take a nap. The 6 mile descent into Mitchell felt like nothing compared to the morning. For some reason I kept slipping into the middle of the road. Instead of riding close to the shoulder, out of the way of traffic I kept inching toward the yellow divider line. No amount of leaning would let me coast out of the middle of the road. Thankfully there wasn’t much traffic coming down. The town of Mitchell looked like something out of the wild wild west. Everything was old wood buildings and many dirt roads sprawled out from the main road. There only seemed to be one restaurant in town so that turn into lunch. Everyone (except Jolee) got burgers which turned into an excellent choice. Their fries were really good too! It definitely ranked as top 5 best lunch of the trip. After lunch I called Dairy Queen and the gas station I stopped before to see if anyone had seen my tent. No luck. I decided I would forget about what I was going to do tonight and worry about it later. The rest of the day was going to be another climb and then a 30 mile descent into Prineville. The climb was a 2000ft climb like the morning but instead of 30 miles it was only 15. So basically way steeper. There was a bit of descent to get to the next climb but by the time I got to the base (like 3 miles out of town) I felt really sluggish and tired. The rest of the day took a turn for the strange and I still wonder what happened.

About half a mile up the climb I was going so slow that I feared I was going to fall over. I decided to take a break and re-hydrate myself. I got off my bike to see Evan almost passing me. We said hi when he passed and I said I’ll see you in Prineville. However when I got back on my bike I swear I he passed me again and I think I said hi (again?) but when I looked up no one was there. I started having the weirdest feelings of deja vous. Like I would see a car pass me but then I would see it again but going the other way. I’m sure Mark and Jolee passed me at one point but I don’t remember when they did. A while up the road I found myself standing on the side of the road with my bike 500 feet behind me. Did I get off my bike and start walking? Why would I leave my bike? The sun got insanely hot and I think I finally began to understand what all my band directors called ‘sun stupid’. It beat down and encompassed everything leaving nowhere to hide. I could hear the blood pounding in my ear beating in time with my peddle. Whatever music I was listening to I couldn’t hear it despite being turned up all the way. The road grew painfully bright and even though I was wearing sunglasses I had to squint to see. Time seemed to be jumping. I found myself sitting on the side of the road. The scenery looked the same and I had no idea how long I’d been sitting there. My water was more than half gone although I didn’t remember drinking it. My head felt wet and I discovered I had dumped two liters of my water on my helmet. However most of it dripped off my helmet and didn’t do anything. Talking out loud because I didn’t trust my thoughts I said I must be more than halfway up and there’s nothing else to be but keep going. I could see the road zigzagging ahead and I knew that there was no way I was more than halfway there. Looking at my watch I saw that it was almost 4:30….I had gone 5 miles in two hours. Carefully taking note of my water I kept going. Again time jumped and something wet was dripping on my shirt. Thinking I had dumped my water out again I was horrified that whatever was dripping on my shirt was red. My nose had begun to bleed. Something was wrong but I couldn’t think straight. It was probably a miracle I didn’t wreck.

After getting to the summit I wasn’t even happy just relieved. Immediately I felt so much more relaxed. Only 30 miles downhill to Prineville! I really needed to get more water so at the first first sign of a rest stop I pulled over. To my dismay there was no water, sink or spicket to be found. Well now that I was going downhill I wasn’t that concerned. Knowing it was getting late I pushed on. Unfortunately within the last 20 miles a ridiculous headwind picked up outside of Ochoco Lake which frustrated me to no end. Around the lake there were a ton of campgrounds and motels. For the first time the whole summer I was so close to calling it quits for the day. Even worse was a storm seemed to be blowing up in front of me. (probably where the wind was coming from) Which meant it was probably going to rain tonight, and I didn’t have a tent. Near tears and fed up with wind I finally made it into town where I found everyone else at the local McDonald’s. It was a quite dinner and  everyone looked exhausted. It seemed like everyone had a tough day. Our next stop was Dairy Queen which had a funny sign. Not sure why they needed to post that haha….. (for some reason I can’t find the picture of the sign but it basically said ‘Keep out bikes’ or ‘Park your bike outside’)

The only campground in town was an R.V. park which let up set up in a patch of grass with some other people. The sky was increasing growing darker. It was definitely going to rain. I spotted a large pavilion and decided to call that good enough shelter. While waiting to take a shower I called my parents. They just got back from getting remarried in Vegas but to be honest I wasn’t really paying attention. The loss of my tent was really After taking a shower it looked like had rained a bit but already blown over. It left an incredible double rainbow over the R.V. park. The temperature looked like it was going to drop. Since Brent had a two person tent (actually he had the same tent I did) him and Evan shared it and Evan let me borrow his. It was an incredible nice thing for them to do and I can’t express how grateful I was for it. I hate sleeping in the cold. The day turned out to be not so bad after all. Only one pass left for tomorrow. Mark speaks very highly of it so I’m very excited to climb McKenzie Pass.