Day 3: Riding The Trucker through the columbia River

June 3, 2017

Today is the one year anniversary of an oil train derailment on the Columbia River, so the good folks in Mosier were protesting, which seemed appropriate since our president just pulled the U.S. of A. Out of the Paris climate change agreement. But I'll get to the protest in a minute...

After a not too rushed start and a breakfast of crackers and peanut butter I headed off to Hood River and a second breakfast. I missed a turn off and ended up south of the freeway and not on the river side coming into town, but by the time I realized my error I was in the middle of town and going down would have meant, well, going down, which would ultimately mean going up, which is the kind of thing you do in a car, not on a bike. I have plenty more river riding left so headed to breakfast instead.

The days ride was beautiful. Part of the route covered more bicycle only trails that were once part of the origional road I spoke of yesterday. In fact most of the ride was on that route though not all of it was closed to traffic.

It was right after the no car stretch that I rolled into Mosier and listened to the protests a bit, and lended myself to the cause so their crowd would be larger by one body, if only for a short time.

Then it was up a long grade and the prettiest overlooks of the trip.

I was headed to Deschutes state park for the night and had to ride through The Dalles, which apparently I dont pronounce right no matter how hard I try, so says the locals. Anyway, I was riding on the bike path into town and in the part that paralleled the road there was a Road Closed sign, which I ignored because the thought of backtracking into the headwinds was unappealing. I went. On hoping the road was not REALLY closed, but just closed to cars going through legally.

I was almost to town when I ran across the problem. The river was so high it was flooding the tunnel that leads to the town. Damn, except it didnt look that deep on one spot so I got on the Trucker and we went through together. So technically, I rode through the Columbia river..

When I arrive at the campground all that was left were sites in the overload section, which was the bad news, but there was no fee because of some state park free day thingy, which was the good news.

I had been chatting with my camping neighbors Pat and Chris a bit earlier and a little before sundown they invited me over for some wine. Pat worked for Freight Trucks before retireing.

"It that like Peterbuilt" i asked. "My dad did some work for Peterbuilt back in the day."

"Peterbuilt is the enemy," he said, mostly joking.

We had a nice chat and i drank enough wine so that by the time i hit the sack I slept like a baby.

Another great day on the bike!