After giving our bikes a proper wash and getting breakfast, we were ready to roll to the next stage of the BDR. Fun fact: the breakfast cost about as much as the car wash. There was just so much mud caked on our bikes, it took a surprisingly long time to get rid of it. Although I have to admit, I enjoyed the breakfast way more.
We started on dry pavement for the first half of the day, checking out the lake views and waving to the cattle grazing by the road. We then turned to dirt tracks near Christmas Valley. The initial sections climbed into a dry evergreen forest, slightly dusty, but much more preferable to mud. We really did not want to get into mud. The trail climbed and reached the top, and then descended in a similar fashion – dry, twisty, mostly predictable.
As we came down into the valley, the route opened up to a series of fast hard packed dirt roads. We were having a good time until at some point the GPS suggested we make a turn, where we faced a cattle gate. It did require a pause to open and close it, but otherwise it was not a big deal. In this case, Alex volunteered to open it, let me continue on, and then close it behind both of us. Except only a couple hundred meters after the gate, I stopped and shouted to hold off closing it just yet. In front of me the trail was flooded as far as the eye could see. I tried to scout the off trail sections to the left and to the right, in case we could go around the flooded muddy areas that way. There were wire fences on both sides of the trail, with just a couple of meters of “shoulder” space, and as I proceeded, I felt my boot sinking into the soft saturated soil. “Look”, I said, “it is passable, but it is very wet all the way to the next set of mountains, so we will get muddy again”. We could go, theoretically. It seems my admission of that bypassed the switch in Alex’s neural network responsible for insisting on pushing ahead. We took some pictures, I carefully turned my bike around, waved goodbye to the tadpoles in the giant puddle, and headed back to the main road.
On the fast hard packed dirt, we followed the path between numerous ranches, with cattle occasionally running close to the road, and sometime across. The older cows were very calm and didn’t pay us any attention, while the younger calves would get all excited and start running away as we approached. Typically with a frisky sway in their tails, switching between a jog and a full on gallop.
As we got to pavement, the logical step was to head into Bend, the nearest population center. It seemed like a perfect opportunity to stop for a couple of days and stretch our feet off the bikes. We rented a place with a full kitchen and luxuriated in the ability to cook complex meals from scratch.
The beautiful Deschutes River provided an opportunity for strolling. The local geese were busy with goslings, and one group in particular was fun to observe as they made their way from the steep embankment into the river. Most goslings came to the edge and jumped right into the water, from a height of a meter or so. One of them was having none of that. It looked down and decided this risk is not acceptable, and kept walking along the embankment. Finally, perhaps 20 meters onwards, there was a section where it could carefully climb down some small rocks and just step into the water. There are definitely days when I feel like that gosling.
The weather being warm and sunny, we could not pass a chance to hike in this region, and went to Smith Rock State Park. The Misery Ridge Trail did feel a bit miserable at first – a steep ascent on a ridge exposed to the blazing sun had my heart racing – but the views of the canyon, the river and the unique rock formations more than made up for it.
Our souls refreshed, we felt ready to take on the next section of the BDR, come snow or mud.
