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(Day 06) Leaving Klamath Falls

Our wake up call was at 09:00 but I got up around 08:00 out of habit. I started calling around to find out where we could take Brad's bike. Bicycle Jones was open when I called and they said come on down. We finally got our stuff crammed back into the bag it entered the room in and left around 10:30.

Ridding into downtown Klamath Falls made me realize how much bigger it was than I'd thought coming in the night before. Downtown Klamath Falls was very pleasant, they'd done a good job of preserving the older buildings and feel of the town.

Bicycle Jones had just moved into a new space they'd fixed up. They worked us in as soon as we got there. The owner, Stan, got Brad's bike squared away for a grand total of $12. Apparently BikeE hadn't tightened up the crank set properly before they shipped it, we'll yell at them when we get to Corvallis. I do have a new favorite bike shop in Klamath Falls now, and Stan is on the post card list.

We got directions to a Safeway so we went and picked up some groceries. Notably a $6 container of potato salad, if $6 sounds like it'd buy a lot of potato salad you're correct it will. We knew we probably wouldn't be able to eat it all but got it any way. We got about half way through it before deciding to just bring it with us.

While we were packing up in the parking lot Charles fell in love with a sea gull, with feet but no legs, that was flying around. He named it Stubby and tried to tame it but Stubby just couldn't give up his freewheeling lifestyle and settle down. So we left.

We rode out of town with 60+ miles to Crater Lake and about 7 hours of light. We took Hwy 97 out along Upper Klamath lake, which was pretty sketchy shoulder, wise. Brad's new trip highlight was seeing a hawk and snake fighting in a field across from the lake. The snake lucked out and got away. As we were watching the snake slither off some asshole trucker honked at us.

After a little riding you begin to categorize vehicles by how worried you need to be about them. Of the two classes car (cars, trucks, SUVs) and heavy (semis, RVs, buses) you've got to be a bit more concerned about the heavies. They're wider but, with the exception of RVs, professionally driven and will give you as much space as they can. SUVs and RVs are the two to really worry about, their drivers don't know how wide their rig is and they don't spend 40 hours a week driving.

Hwy 97 got a whole lot more ride able after it got away from the lake where there was some room to put in a shoulder. We got onto Hwy ??? and started out toward Crater Lake after stopping to try to eat some more potato salad. We went into this valley that was straight out of a post card, green green grass, meandering streams, old barns. Very pretty but not a good place to camp. We ended up camped in this lot across from a cemetery a ways from water but those freaking mosquitoes found us. God, it's the only thing I hate about Oregon.

andrew

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Posted by: drewish at August 15, 2005 07:20 PM

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