Day 7 - Sept 14th

There was a half marathon on the Row River trail today, so everyone was encouraged to get an early start to avoid any conflicts.  That, combined with the good weather led us to our earliest start of the trip - before 7:30am.

Out on the Row River trail, it wasn’t that cold, but it was a bit misty in the morning.  It made for some pretty views of Dorena Lake.  After exiting the trail, we took forest service roads for most of the day.

There was a bit more traffic on these roads than the forest service roads from yesterday, but nothing too bad.  The first part of these trails were on relatively moderate grades through some pretty forest.  I wish I’d stopped once or twice here to take pictures, but I kept going to the first rest stop.

After the rest stop, the grade increased.  There were some sections of 9 or 10%.  Music Man was not here to help me, but I kept going, eventually reaching the second and final rest stop.  There would be no lunch stop this time, since lunch would be at the end of this, the shortest ride of the trip.

After the rest stop, the climb continues.  After one climb, there’s some gravel and some descending, and then one “final’ climb.  I put that in quotes because there are still some rolling hills after that.  But it is mostly downhill after that.  We were warned about this downhill as well, but it didn’t seem as bad to me as the previous day’s downhill.  The staff had spray-painted many of the potholes and cracks in the road so we could see them coming.

After many twists and turns we reached the road Todd and I had ridden on that first afternoon, so I knew we were close.  I sped along the good road and soon reached the finish line in Oakridge.

After lunch, we went over to long term parking where we retrieved our bags (not an easy task when there are hundreds of bags lying on the ground in no particular order).  After a shower, we were ready to hit the road around 2:30pm for the long drive back home.

We ended up on highway 97, on the same road we’d ridden on a few days ago.  This time was different, though.  Now, there was a prescribed burn nearby and the skies were filled with smoke.  I can only assume they planned the burn for after the bike ride, since riding through that smoke would have been hell.

We only made 3 stops on the way back, arriving back in the Bay Area around 11:30pm.