June Bike Tour Day 2. The Day of the Bike Wreak.

Ride length...longest day:  77.5 miles.  Hard but oddly, not the toughest day of the trip.
From Paradise Park Campground to Oakridge.

Here's highlights:

We woke to a coolish morning and found this awesome ART on the parking strip of our campsite:

We guessed it may be an ancient cave painting from a long gone race of early humans or perhaps a less dressed up Ganesha, Hindu Goddess of Compassion....or maybe just an elephant some kid drew.  Nice way to meet the morn none the less.  

The trip out to Oakridge involves a long climb.  Not a hard climb...just a long one.  We stopped for snacks right before the climb which involved mostly sugar.  Not a good idea as part way up the first part of the climb we starting getting 'bonky'.  For those of you unfamiliar with the term 'bonky' its the body's way of communicating to you that you are out of fuel for it.  Can happen one of two ways...eat too much sugar and mess up the balance of homeostasis as we did or just simply ride alot without putting more fuel/food into the body.  The rain kindly waited until mid morning to begin which then lasted until evening.  But at least it wasn't too hot during riding.  : )   After awhile things started looking really pretty: 

And then...we met Luna the puppy with her owner at Terwilliger Hot Springs (which we walked to but didn't get in as it was already pretty occupied by many people).  She is a schnauzer blue healer mixed with a huge amount of adorable.  This pup was smart and believe it or not in this picture she is about 10 months old.  Luna will always look like a puppy.  Oh and there was also this amazing water fall into a lake.  Did I mention there was a puppy??

Now we began the hardest part of the climb.  Steeper and the rain was coming down hard.  I was wet, cold and grumpy.  I started complaining about all this to Justin and then do what I usually do in situations like this...shut up and get to work.  I dug in and started dropping Justin.  After a while of watching me slowly pull away, Justin decides to try and catch me.  Notice I wrote TRY to catch me.  There is nothing better then kicking your husband's butt at something he excels at.  : )   The Sweetpea Bike is really made to fit me which means I ride better on it then anything else I have ever been on.  Period.  We celebrated my achievement by having a snack and photo stop.  

But we weren't done climbing.  Ugh.  So back on the bikes we go coming to camping shacks in the woods and old growth trees at the crest of the climb.  

The kinda bummer part of this climb was we didn't get to drop for miles majestically after reaching the top and thus get to take a break from the constant work.  We had a very mild descent after which the road just leveled out.  While is was really pretty, lots of trees, not much traffic and a lovely river to follow there was no place to camp along the road so we just had to keep going until the next town.  Now we were REALLY tired and cold and out of fuel.  We indulged in another snack stop out of exhaustion.  Then dragged our very soggy, sore butts back onto the bikes to ride onto Oakridge.  

Here's Justin eating carrots and peanut butter at said pit stop.  Yeah I know, not very gourmet but when you're hungry and cold you'll eat just about anything.  

And here's me with 6 miles left to go at the covered bridge where Michelle P and Dawn began a girl ride once long time ago.  Yep I'm really tired in this picture.  In fact the complaining started again by yours truly.  We of course had to ride up a 3 mile hill to get to town, which felt like 80 miles.  Once in town we asked for where a motel might be.  We got directions and headed straight for the first one we could find.  And then it happened.  I was tired, cold, my judgement was off and I cut a bad turn over a curb and wreaked my new bike.  GRRRRRR!!!  I was okay and the bike ended up only scuffing a pedal and tearing a bit more of the rear chrome fender (that Justin in his ultimate wisdom had already torn) and I got an awesome bruise on my butt.  After a little dusting off and reassuring the husband I was still up for riding tomorrow we got a room, had baths and slept in a bed.  WOOHOO!!!  End of day two.