Day Four: Fort Klamath, Oregon to Lakeview, Oregon

June 13, 2019

It was chilly this morning, and I was tired from all the climbing yesterday, so I was in no hurry to start riding - until my stomach started rumbling. There was no place to eat in Fort Klamath so I hurriedly cycled the fourteen miles on a mostly empty road to Chiloquin (population 737).

I love this kind of "outsider art" mural. This was on a bookstore (or was it a library?) in Chiloquin. I like that the guy is sitting by the riverside reading an enormous copy of Joyce's "Ulysses", a book so difficult that I have never been able to finish it, despite multiple attempts over several decades.

Chiloquin was a pleasant little town, and the Pot Belly Cafe, which had been recommended to me this morning by the lady at the motel, was the first super-friendly breakfast place of the trip.

I walked in to find that all the tables in the small place were occupied, but a couple of locals immediately invited me to sit down at a large table with them. Everyone in the place was friendly and had questions for me. Interestingly, for the second time on this trip, I met an octogenerian (or maybe septuagenarian) man who was (or had been) a bicycle tourist. This guy had started bike touring in 1974, which was probably the pastime's golden age in the USA. He told me he was glad that touring was still a thing.

The cafe is the kind of place where everyone knows each other, and conversations are conducted from table-to-table. The guy sitting next to me asked about my route, and when I mentioned that I'd had to detour around Crater Lake, a woman at another table expressed surprise that the north entrance to the park was still closed. It seems like the status of the north entrance is something that everyone in the area is extremely interested in - maybe because of the impact on the local tourist economy.

I had a cheese omelet and hash browns again. This time I added a hotcake, which was just a little too much to finish, and as I walked out into the bright sun and got on the bike, I felt slightly queasy.

That passed, fortunately, and I started out onto Sprague River Road. Traffic was fairly light, and it was mostly flat, so the 24 miles to tiny Sprague River went quickly.

I walked into a neat little community library and sunk into a soft chair for a while. I might have dozed off for a minute. It was slightly difficult to force myself to rise out of the chair, but I succeeded, even though I felt like taking a nap. I noticed on Google Maps that there was some sort of multi-use path a few hundred feet from the library. It looked like I could use this trail to avoid all of the highway to Bly, my tentative destination for the day. When I asked the librarian about this path, though, she seemed to have absolutely no knowledge of it, even though it was literally outside the library door. I walked outside where a dog barked at me from its perch in a pickup truck's driver seat. In a first, the dog's owner came out and chastised her dog for barking at me. She gave the dog a stern talking to, while I just laughed and told her not to worry about it.

I rode onto the path, which was very, very rough. So far the road I'd been riding on wasn't TOO bad, so after a few hundred feet I gave up and got back on Sprague River Road. Before leaving town, I stopped at the Squaw Flat Store, where, as usual in the country stores I've visited on this trip, signs sternly warned that backpacks were NOT ALLOWED inside. I assumed that my handlebar bag did not fall under this ban, which I suppose is designed to deter shoplifters, and carried it in with me. I bought a few snacks, water, and Gatorade, then walked outside to observe a teenage girl adamantly refuse to use the store's nasty-looking outhouse, despite her mother's warning that it would be her last chance for a while. Ha.

The bike path was too rough to be enjoyable, so I gave up on it after a few hundred feet.

Where some of the action is in Sprague River.

Where the rest of the action is in Sprague River.

Back on Sprague River Road, which was pleasant enough, and then I made a left onto OR-140, which was noticeably busier. And no shoulder. After about 14 miles I reached Beatty, another tiny village, and walked into the little store there. I bought Gatorade and talked for a while to the woman running the store.

I was seeing clouds now to the east. As I rode the 13 miles to Bly, the sky grew darker.

I was not impressed by Bly (population 486), which seemed pretty run down. I was feeling gloomy and lonely, and that, combined with the cloudy sky, probably meant that I didn't give Bly a fair shake. Sorry, Bly.

There was an RV park three miles outside of town, so I continued uphill on OR-140, and then turned onto a rough, pot-hole-strewn rode for a quarter mile and turned into the RV park. It was a dump. This was not one of those nice, manicured RV parks where retirees temporarily park their expensive motor homes. Instead, people were living here in small travel trailers. I went to what I assumed was the "tent area" and sat at a creaky picnic table. I could hear babies crying, couples arguing, dogs barking. I looked down and noticed dog crap all over the place. It was miracle that I hadn't ridden or walked in any of it. Just then, it started to rain.

It was 3:49 in the afternoon, and I'd ridden 77 miles. I made the quick decision that I would NOT stay in this depressing shithole, no matter what, and got back on the bike and rode out. I looked at my map and saw that it was about 40 miles, much of it uphill, to the larger town of Lakeview. That was my goal, but if I couldn't make it, I decided I'd stealth camp somewhere on the side of the road.

I got back on OR-140 and started to climb. It started to rain harder - a chilly drizzle which was almost a downpour. I pulled off near a ranch and put on my bright yellow rain jacket. A man came out and asked me if I wanted a ride to Lakeview. I declined with thanks, and then he mentioned that the ranch was actually owned by a church, and that one of the buildings nearby was the church building. What I REALLY wanted at this point was to stay the night in the church, and I made some "subtle" hints to that effect, but the guy didn't bite. Instead, he asked if he could pray for me. I assented, doing my best to suppress an eye-roll - we were both standing in the cold rain while it thundered, so this really did not seem like the best time for a lengthy prayer.

His prayer completed, I started climbing again. There was now a passing lane in addition to the decent shoulder, which pleased me. "Thank god there's a passing lane", I thought, as a couple of trucks passed me with much room to spare. This caused me to think of the John Dever song "Thank god I'm a country boy", so for the next several miles I made up my own ridiculous lyrics to the tune, involving passing lanes and cycling. They were terrible, so I won't share them here.

The rain slacked off, and eventually stopped. I reached the top of the climb, descended, then did another climb and descent, and found that I now had a monster tailwind which allowed me to ride 20+ miles per hour. I rode through a large, beautiful valley, and then past a lake or reservoir, and then, just as I got to 100 miles for the day, the sun came out.

I reached Lakeview (population 2,294) at around 7:30. Lakeview was a prosperous-looking western town with wide streets. I got a room at a motel, cleaned up, and walked out to find that every restaurant in town was closing, at 8:00. So I walked to the nearby Safeway supermarket, bought a microwave pizza and other food, and took it back to my room for dinner, feeling extremely satisfied about my sudden decision to leave Bly in the rain.

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Today's ride: 110 miles (177 km)
Total: 341 miles (549 km)

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