East Lake
As I arrived in Drain my reminiscing took a different turn as I instinctively turned down the street where the Catholic church we used to go to stood. It was still there apparently abandoned for a while. It was painted brown when I remembered it being green. Other than that the distinctive shape of the church and the adjoining classrooms are etched in my memory.
Without thinking I headed down 99 to Yoncalla. I ended up in the parking lot of the Yoncalla Food Center and the Dickeys hardware store where we used to stop after church every Sunday. We were allowed to get one candy bar each. I may be exaggerating, but I believe when we started the tradition when I was in third grade a candy bar was a nickel. By the time I had left the tradition, I am sure they were almost 50 cents and weighed half as much.
As I turned down the road towards Scotts Valley even though there was no sign indicating I should do so, I kept thinking about how I learned to drive on these roads and took many more trips down them and they have not changed in over 30 years. In Scotts Valley I took some pictures of the original farmhouse we lived in the first summer we moved up from Los Angeles, then it was on to Cottage Grove.
I stopped at M's just long enought to shower, shave, wash my clothes, change the oil in my car, upload 3 journal entries, and get M's web page up and running. I was in and out in four hours. I had trouble with AOL letting me get to my FTP site otherwise I may have been able to fix it for me to upload my journal entrries on the road easier.
I headed up Highway 58 to East Lake oblivious to how many miles or hours I had been on the road. As expected, as I got the the other side of the Cascades the skies miraculously cleared and I was dry again. As I drove down that path, I had the feeling I was driving back from Cottage Grove to Klamath Falls from my OIT days.
I arrived at a bitterly cold East Lake around 6:30 pm. Everyone was in their typical Oregon cold weather gear wuth heavy jacket, stocking cap and boots. I was still wearing shorts, tee-shirt, and sandals. I set up camp, put on a sweatshirt and headed to the north side of the lake to try my lure. The north campground was still closed, but I was able to sneak my bike in. I caught a couple of chubs then headed back to camp to some long pants and a stocking cap.
It was very, very peaceful that night with no campers within 100 feet of my site. I figure that is about right for me. I need to keep everyone at about 100 feet away and I am OK. Any closer and they are invading my space, any farther and I get scared as I would find out later.
Boy it was cold that night. I was nice and toasty in my sleeping bag and tent and did not want to get up. The tent by the way had been tried considerrably by the late evening sun. When I finally got up around 8:30 am the next morning I situated the tent and tarp to get maximum sun while I rode my bike up a trail I had spotted the night before.
The sign at the trailhead only prohibited motorized traffic, so I thought I would give it a try. It indicated there was 2.6 miles to the Cinder Hill viewpoint, so I figured I would be back in less than an hour. Nice try.
The first half of a mile of the trail was fine. I really enjoyed it and was happy to finally put my moutain bike to use. It was narrow relatively flat trail, then the trouble started. It started with a tree that apparently had fallen over the trail during the winter. No bother, I easily lifted my bike over and carried on. A few hundred yards later there was another tree, then another, then another to the point where I was carrying my bike for hundreds of feet at a time. After about a quarter of a mile of that, unable to catch my breath, I locked my bike to a tree and decided to carry on. I still had almost 2 miles to go.
I quickly disposed of those two miles even though I had left my water bottle with the bicycle and was parched from the dry high desert air. The view was definitely worth the climb as seen in the picture above. On the way down I used the GoTo function of my GPS unit to monitor my progress back to my bike. It was kind of fun and a feature I rarely get to use. The unit gives me the heading and bearing of the point I want to go to and my current speed and bearind and estimates how long it will take me to get there. It kind of gets confused on switchbacks when you start moving away from the target.
I arrived back at camp safely and was on the road headed to Bend by 2 pm. At this point I was not sure if I was going to try to spend some time in Bend exploring it as an option for my next move or not. My other idea was to head East to Yellowstone, which I had never visited. I did a litlle shopping in Bend, then my second idea won out and I was on the road again looking for a place to camp for the night.