July 26, 2017
Day 23 Albany KOA - Territorial Bed and Breakfast, Junction City: A nice long, flat road is not a bad thing!
This morning, we again got up early in order to beat the heat. Although we were not scheduled to check in at our BnB until after 2:00, we thought it would be better to get most of the distance done and then just hang out in the little town of Junction City until then.
Leaving the KOA Campground, we headed south on a quiet country road. The morning air was fresh, the road very quiet and we were able to ride side by side for quite a while. Someone asked me recently if I get bored, since we can't normally ride and chat. To be honest, I haven't been bored at all so far. Every mile brings something new to look at and my mind wanders around from one thing to another all of the time. I see something that interests me and I wonder about it. Today I was thinking that normally, if I saw something like that, I would tuck it away and talk to my class about it at some point in the school year. I was always trying to get my students to be as excited and interested in the natural world around them as I am. Sometimes they would share my interest, but very often they did not. I hope that down the road they will remember back and find a spark of interest based on something that we saw together, but you never know. For now, I get to just get excited myself and share that with Jim when we stop for a break.
For example, this morning we chatted again about some of the crops we saw. We got all excited when we saw a sign for experimental grass seeds being grown by Oregon Agriculture. We remembered asking Ben about this and stopped to see what grass being grown for it's seed looked like.
I guess that might be boring to someone else, but for us it was a revelation - now we know something we didn't know before. Every day we learn something new, meet someone new, find out something new about ourselves and what we can do. This is what makes our journey so special to us and we couldn't be happier, despite all the sweat, hills and flat tires!
So, what other things did we see today? Well, there was a red barn. The quintessential red barn.
Why are barns alway red? Is this a fashion statement? Are there rules about that? Was there a time when red paint was the cheapest thing out there? Does anyone know? Please write in our Guestbook if you do. Oh, that reminds me. Please write in our Guestbook. Its up at the top of the page and really easy to do. A lot of friends post on our Facebook pages telling us that they like the journal, but when you write in the Guestbook, it becomes part of this journal and your thoughts and comments will stay with it for as long as this site is around, which we hope is a very long time. So, please, please, write!
Another item that caught our attention was a field being watered. Jim loves the big sprinklers and I am amazed at the amount of water they can distribute, so we took pictures of that. But then, Jim focussed in on the crop being watered and we could not identify it - anyone care to guess?
The following pictures are of other items we found interesting on this day. As you may have guessed, the riding itself was pretty straightforward in that it was straight and we just had to go forward. I don't think I changed gears all day!
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
We stopped for coffee in the very very small town of Harrisburg at a cute little side of the road coffee place called Local Motive where we indulged in lattes and split a long john - yum!
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
After Harrisburg we crossed over the Willamette River, stopping to take pics along the way.
The road we were one became really busy after the bridge and the shoulder narrow or non-existent. There was a side road we could take, so we opted for that and had a lovely quiet ride into Junction City. The little road we came into town on had this cute sign naming all of the families on each side of the road!
Junction City is small, but much larger than Harrisburg. We stopped at the DQ for ice cream, then headed to a local park to chillax for a bit. We took out our chairs and found a shady spot to set them up. I took off my shoes to air my feet out and look at the results - I have polka dots!
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
After a bit, we packed up our things and headed off to the local Safeway to pick up dinner. Our BnB host, Mary, was kind enough to let us check in early and use her fridge to store food in, so our plan was to eat lunch in town then head out the 4 miles to her place and not have to ride back in for dinner. As I was shopping, Jim chatted with an older fellow, Howard Steele, who was also waiting for his wife to finish getting groceries. It turns out that Howard was a country music singer back in the day and he showed Jim his impressive collection of cd's - 14 in all. He mentioned that his family was having a reunion up in Harrisburg. "It's grown so much in the last 10 years" he said. Funny, we thought it was a tiny tiny town, it was hard to imagine it being any smaller!
Groceries bought, we headed back downtown to the McDonald's to have lunch. We don't often do McDonald's but sometimes it just does taste good. Lunch done, we rode out into what was now a pretty hot day. Good thing we only had 4 miles to go and they were all flat!
Arriving at Mary's BnB, we were shown to our very comfortable room and given the run of the place. We relaxed in the back yard for a while before having showers. Once we finish with the blog for today we will head back out to enjoy a nice cold beer and our dinner. Tomorrow we will head down to Eugene where we hope to talk to some local bike shops about the trip out to the coast. We have been looking forward to this part for such a long time, its hard to believe that it is almost here! Thanks for reading and remember the Guestbook!!!!
Today's ride: 51 km (32 miles)
Total: 836 km (519 miles)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 0 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |