An Oregon Adventure by Bike

I have now given up on blogging on a regular basis. Life is too busy to sit in front of a computer more than necessary. From now on I will only write posts about stuff that I think people might find more interesting than the usual updates about who came to see us when and so on.

We have recently returned from another cycle touring trip with Mylla. She is almost 3 years old now so it was a quite different trip compared to the one two years ago to the Yukon.

We were a bit less ambitious with our travel schedule this time (after lessons learned). We decided to hop on a train in Vancouver with aim at Portland in Oregon, US. From there, the plans was to pedal to Bend via the Cascading Rivers Scenic Cycleway, and the McKenzie Pass Scenic Cycleway (with a bit of less interesting highway that links the two. As you can see on the Google earth shots, we passed some spectacular mountains including Mt Hood (highest peak in Oregon at 3,426 m), Mt Jefferson and the Three Sisters mountains. It was certainly rewarding terrain with massive old growth trees almost everywhere.

The trip stats ended up being:

·        450 km over 14 days on the road

·        2 rest days

·        5300 m elevation in total

·        Daily averages of 35 km per day with 450 m elevation

Ok enough geeky stats.

I want to make some comparisons to the trip we did 2 years ago when Mylla was a 9-months-old-crawling-soil-eating-baby-still-breast-feeding. This trip seemed SOOO easy after that experience.

Checking out the sub-marine in Portland before heading to Estacada, our first camp-spot

Preparations:

Apart from lots of research into how much to bike each day and where to most likely camp, we did very little preparations. Instead last trip's chariot, we chose to have Mylla at the back of Charlie's bike in a Yepp seat. We only had a handful small rides before the trip, but she seemed to love it at first sight, so we took that as a goer.

Keeping The Daughter Happy

Just like last trip, this trip was largely about keeping our toddler somewhat happy. If you have a toddler, you know that they all scream/cry from time to time and for no particular reason. I don't think we witnessed any more meltdowns on the trip than at home. In fact, Mylla did very well and seemed to be very happy. She really likes camping, i.e. setting up the tent, putting in all our stuff and toys (not many to speak of) and roll around. Apart from tent rolling I was also amazed how many hours she could spend throwing rocks in the water. Luckily we followed rivers throughout the journey.

During the Yukon trip we found the packing up a real pain. Surprisingly it felt like a non-event on this trip. We were always pleased how easy and fast we could have breakfast and pack up.

We usually did the majority of kms before lunch with the aim to arrive to a new camp spot at 1-2 pm to allow plenty of time to play and explore. With this structure we didn't even feel the need to have rest days. We had two rest days in the end: one near Breitenbush hotsprings and one at Belknap Hotsprings. To be honest it was too hot to sit around in hot pools and we ended up biking on these days as well (because we just love it).

We didn't meet that many other kids en-route. We met a lovely French couple with a 3-year old, Lou, who had a fab time with Mylla. She had a giant sleep-in until 7:30 am after they had played together all evening. That was good timing since the parents had consumed a bit too much of Oregon's finest craft beer that same evening.

Mylla's most frequently used words were Godis (candy/sweets/lollies) and Chocolate. We had nothing to do with it...

Getting excited about all the fishes at the salmon hatchery

Hallo Mr Bear

Shower time

Gear, gear and too much gear

We were prepared for the worst (as usual), but didn't need all the gear. We had the most amazing camping experience: no rain, between 20-30 degrees every day and almost no bugs/mozzies. In the end my rain gear was forgotten at the bottom of the pannier. I think Charlie may even have survived without his sleeping bags (its pretty useless anyways). The mega tarp (which Charlie is so proud of and almost put up just for the sake of it) remained in its bag.

Some of the stuff that took up a lot of space on the last trip, like diapers/nappies, only comprised an emergency stash.

Our tent without the outer fly, which we had to leave off many nights when it was balmy

Family (and gear) photo

Key learning - how to make a fun cycle touring trip:

• Find a scenic route with little traffic - if the route is not interesting it feels boring for everyone.
• Stop when the time is right, not necessarily the scenery (this tip still applies from last trip 2 years ago)
• Get the daily distance just right
• Embrace getting dirty and dusty. The showers were far in-between, but there were plenty of ice-cold rivers
• Snack-up - you can't have too much snack on-board
• Talk to people - cycle touring is the most social way of travelling and it is so easy to make new friends (e.g. Mylla got a beautiful sock monkey given to her at the top of McKenzie Pass - she was so happy to make a new friend)
• 
  

A short stroll along the Pacific Crest Trail with the Sisters in the background. Definately keen to do some of the PCT one day (Note: when daughter is more capable - we had to carry her 90% of the way)

Some of the nice views we have had

Charlie's nice view of my backside

.".but Google maps sent us this way...."

Getting dirty from crawling around in a large lava scree, and the spa treatment that followed in our wild camp