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Wednesday stats

Start: Hoodoo Patio RV Park, McKenzie Bridge, Ore.

End: Eugene Kamping World, Coburg, Ore.

The Daily Progress: 58.7 miles

Cumulative climb: 882 feet

Cumulative descent: 2102

Elevation at endpoint: 423. If the Adventure Cycling app can be trusted, we shouldn't get above 1000 feet for the rest of our ride on the TransAm. Looks like we'll have some rolling hills, but only a few hundred feet in a stretch at most. So I might stop bothering with the elevation stats in the coming days. It seems sufficient to say that we are, and will remain, within a few hundred (or several hundred but less than a thousand) feet of sea level.

Ice cream flavors: Vanilla. I was actually looking for yogurt to go with the blueberries we picked today, but there was only one small yogurt available and Dani told me to take it if I wanted it because it was too small to share, so you know, I didn't want to deny her the yogurt, so I got the ice cream instead. It makes sense to me. She wanted yogurt; she got the yogurt. I thought I wanted the yogurt, but we all know I wanted an excuse to say that I had to get the ice cream, so I did. And it was a pint, and I ate half of it right then and put the other half in my travel coffee thermos to have later. Hours later, it was, impressively, still ice cream consistency. And with the fresh blueberries we picked both times. And I added crushed graham crackers in there ... Ah, now it's indulgences like this that make bike touring even more satisfying.

Lodging expenses: $29

Food expenses: $28 for breakfast at a coffee chuck wagon called Serendipity, $5 for two pounds of blueberries (picked ourselves ... nom nom nom ... best $5 spent on the entire tour), $38 for snacks at the Riverview Market, which did not seem to have much of a view, if my memory is accurate.

Wednesday wonders

Dani seems to have embraced my idea of bike touring: Bike about a quarter of the day's distance; stuff your face; repeat as needed. The ride today was easy and broken up by: breakfast and coffee; blueberry picking and devouring; and acquiring more foods to eat (primarily to complement the blueberries) and then eating them too. 

There was, as I'm sure Dani will tell you below, a little frustration over finding a place to camp tonight, but all in all, today was free of any real difficulty and instead was notable for its delicious blueberries and the joy of picking them. I could definitely do this for another week — or ten.

Dani's daily digest

With no real reason to wake up early, we slept until 6. It felt great.

The morning was cool and overcast, a dramatic change from the weather we've had since I joined the trip. 

Our first stop of the day was Serendipity Cafe, one of the "espresso chuckwagons" that keep the west caffeinated. The availability of espresso drinks is one of the biggest differences I've noted between my time on the western TransAm and my Phoenix-to-DC ride 10 years ago. It was all black drip coffee there and then, and milk or creamer was a rare treat. Here and now, any spot developed enough to have a name on a map is likely to have a little trailer selling espresso drinks and breakfast foods. At this one, I got a matcha latte and banana/almond butter/honey/chia toast. Chris got an iced latte and a veggie breakfast burrito. He let me have a bite of the burrito, and I thought it was quite good.

After our breakfast stop, riding conditions on Route 126 decreased markedly. The road had little shoulder and lots of traffic, including logging trucks (which cause a huge draft that knocks bikes around a bit). If I had to ride this section again, I would duck off the main highway on to the small roads that parallel it as often as possible. Not only are they more pleasant, they are also more interesting.

Our second stop of the day turned out to be a real highlight. We stopped at a place called Blueberry Patch Farm. We weren't quite sure what we would find there. I thought it might be a produce stand. Instead, it was a U-pick blueberry farm. We suited up in bucket-holding harnesses and headed out into the fields, where ripe, luscious, juicy, flavorful blueberries came off the bushes in handfuls. These were the best blueberries I've had in my life. Knowing our cargo carrying capacity was limited, we tried to restrain ourselves, but we picked over two pounds. The total cost came to $4.19; I handed the guy a 5-dollar bill. Best five dollars I've spent on this trip -- EASY.

Ten miles past the berry farm we finally pulled off Highway 126. The sun broke free at about the same time. We enjoyed sixteen miles of riding along back roads in spectacular weather. About halfway through those miles, we stopped at a convenience store for a few food items. We were hoping for vanilla yogurt and graham crackers so we could make parfaits with our blueberries, but there was only one tub of vanilla yogurt left, so Chris had to make do with vanilla ice cream. I know. Poor Chris. (As an aside -- you can get a really good regional yogurt brand called Yami even at the most dismal convenience stores in Oregon.) We ate lunch in a shady spot of the convenience store's parking lot. Our blueberry confections hit the spot. After eating, Chris looked into our dwindling paper sack of blueberries and said, "You know, the next time we think we're buying an outrageous amount of blueberries..."

"WE SHOULD BUY TWICE AS MANY!" I interrupted.

"I was going to say we should buy 25 percent more."

[Editor's note: Dani is totally right. We should've bought twice as many.]

Our plan was to camp at Armitage Park but the guy running the check-in kiosk said there were no spots available. This irked me a bit because there were plenty of places where we could have pitched a tent without causing any harm, so why not just take our money and let us sleep there? Fortunately, a round black kitty approached me and asked for some pets, thus giving me the emotional fortitude to continue on to our next camping option. 

There are two RV parks in the town of Coburg. One had better reviews on Google so we went there first. I should have known that things were going to end badly when I saw the fleet of golf carts, which portend strict enforcement of asinine rules like "no clothes lines." The second warning should have been the beautiful flower beds, which signal "this is a NICE RV park -- no tenting riffraff allowed here." Sure enough, we were turned away. "No tent camping." Incensed, I bought a La Croix from their fancy park store and drank it on their fancy porch. That'll teach 'em.

So that's how we've come to stay at Eugene Kamping World, whose park map puts it this way: "We might not be as fancy as some, but we've got the basics and we're easy on the wallet." It's fine.

We ate the last of our blueberries with dinner.