Day 42

Mileage: 107
Total mileage: 3684

How can Oregon be this freaking awesome? ! I'm not even in the good part yet!

Last night I went to the park in New Meadows to get some sleep. I eyed the verdant lawn suspiciously and eventually choose to crash on the concrete slab by the visitor information board. My decision paid off when the sprinklers came on halfway through the night and I was dry. I've also gotten pretty good at finding power outlets. Under the little pagoda where I was sleeping there was a light, which meant electricity. Sure enough, tucked up under the roof there was an outlet box which I was able to reach by climbing the side of the little structure. Electricity for another day!

Breakfast in Council was cheap again! 7.89 got me eight eggs, two huge pancakes and a biscuit with jelly. I love being out of tourist country. The roads are open and clear and I sometimes have the better part of an hour with the landscape all to myself in peace and quiet to just daydream and think while enjoying the scenery.

50 miles into my day I hit the little town of Cambridge. My maps indicated a bike shop but gave no address so I started looking around. What followed was the small town process of getting a bike fixed. I asked a random lady walking down the street if she knew where it was. She didn't, but remembered that there used to be something with bikes at the fabric shop. In the fabric shop the proprietor informed me that there used to be a bike shop sharing the building, but that the mechanic had moved it into his garage up the street at his house. At this point I was ready to quit because I just wanted to get my tires back to pressure and do some cleaning, but she insisted on calling Tom, the owner, and putting me on the phone. Tom was busy rafting the river but offered to cut his trip short and come back to town for me. When I informed him what I was looking for he told me he had a bike pump on his porch for general use and gave me directions to his house. I rode there and found the pump which didn't work. So I went and got ice cream from the grocery store instead.

30 miles up the road I descended 3000 feet down and across the snake river at the site of a small dam. I was cooking along through the arid landscape, minding my own business when suddenly I noticed I was riding past a 'Welcome to Oregon' sign. What!? I wasn't supposed to start a new state today, was I? Sure enough, I checked my maps and apparently there was a border crossing planned for this afternoon. And surprisingly, even though the landscape stayed rugged and dry like Idaho, my day changed significantly once I got into this new state.

I was riding along a river, not a mile into Oregon and realized with some incredulity that I'd somehow only had one meal so far
In the day. Breakfast had been late and lunch just hadn't happened after ice cream this afternoon. On cue I rode past some wild plum trees. These are, in fact, the same fruit which I was told were cherries at the ranger station the other day, but they taste more like apricots or plums, so I'm believing the wild plum angle. There were deep purple, soft pink, bright yellow and multicolored fruits, all on different trees. I had slightly more confidence since I'm still alive after the last time I ate these, but they were also a different color, so I was still cautious. I enjoyed what was hopefully a sublethal dose which worked itself out to be roughly as many plums as I could fit in my stomach. They were delicious! I wanted to chug a water bottle to fill, but my last leg of the day was going to be a 26 mile pull through an area called Hell's Canyon, which didn't sound like the kind of place you wanted to be without water in. Satisfied, I rode on past hundreds more trees, positively lining the road along the water, each with thousands of plums so ripe that the slightest touch would dislodge them.

Suddenly I was smacked in the face by a familiar scent. I couldn't quite place it, but it smelled unquestionably like Washington and childhood. I came around the next corner to find a whole thicket of blackberries growing wild along the cliff by the road!!! Once again I couldn't help but stop and I spent the next half hour reliving the years I spent as a kid in Seattle, picking the good blackberries from the thicket next to our house and leaving the unripe ones. I was wishing for the little wooden step stool that we used to use to get the higher berries because there were so many good ones just out of reach. I think I also may have solved a childhood mystery.

When living in Arizona we had lots of ants in our yard. If you crushed one with your finger, it would let off a very particular and strangely familiar sweet smell. That small always reminded me of something that had nothing to do with ants and I never could figure out what it was. I think I eventually just assumed it was a perfume I had smelled somewhere. Today, while cramming berries into my mouth I suddenly got a burst of the flavor corresponding to that perfume! It jogged my memory and finally I remembered that peculiar taste that only comes with one in a hundred or so berries. I think, and I might be wrong, but I think that flavor comes from eating a blackberry with an ant on it. I'm not completely positive because I couldn't find any more ants to test my theory, but that's the working hypothesis right now.

Down the road, still in Hell's Canyon, bushes of elderberries started mixing themselves into the ever thickening collage of plums and berries. As I climbed a little out of the canyon I got to pass through a few little riverbeds which were evidently lined with wild mint in addition to all the wild apple trees. The sweet minty smell mixed with the blossomy apple scent and filled the cool river air with incredible fragrance. At one point, crossing over the top of a hill, I had a whole valley laid out in front of me, dense green foliage carpeting the bottom while the scrub covered walls rose high to either side. I stopped for a moment just to take in the sight and noticed a bald eagle flapping lazily across the landscape not 50 yards ahead of me. He coolly glanced over at me on his way past as if to say 'That's right, this is freaking 'Merica, son.'

So if this bountiful garden is the desolate wasteland part of Oregon, what do I have in store on the other side of the cascades?

Tonight I'm sleeping on a stage in the park of Halfway, Oregon. G'night!