Day 6 Dallas to Corvallis OR

Looking east, south of Monmouth

It isn't a big deal riding from Dallas to Corvallis, so I didn't start riding till 7 PM. Think of it as a the second part of Day 5 - I was just completing my ride to Corvallis after stopping for a (48 hour long...) supper in Dallas. Since it gets dark about 9 PM now, and since I was going to a friends house that I had never seen before, I hustled on down the road, averaging a bit over 15 mph for about two hours. It was a relatively flat ride, with no major hills, through the Willamette Valley with mountains in the distance on either side.

Rickreall - shoulders and bike path

I rode from Dallas east the few miles to Rickreall and then headed south on 99W. From Rickreall to Monmouth, 99W has an OK shoulder and a bike path beside the highway. I rode the shoulder: I broke my collarbone on that bike path in '96 and, even though I got to know some mighty fine people as a result of that accident, I ain't a riding there no more! After Monmouth, the shoulder is excellent and the bike path doesn't exist.

Great riding late in the day!

I did have one truck driver, driving a double trailer semi, move over so as to put his tires just on the white line as he passed me, but other than that, drivers were polite and the riding was good. The weather was nicer today than it has been for the last few days - the sun was shining most of the day (!) - but it was still unseasonably cool. Earlier in the day I went for a nice ride with the friend I was staying with - he and his wife are two of the great people I met because I broke my collar bone in '96 - and we almost got hot climbing some hills. Maybe Oregon will get back to summer soon, but, for now, I'm just hoping for several dry cool days before the rain comes again.