Day 40, Tour 10 Crater Lake to Oakland, OR

Umqua River

Another long day of about 110 miles with a mile vertical of climbing but two miles vertical of descending.It started with a repeat of the 13 mile climb I did yesterday to get up to the turnoff for the road to the north entrance of Crater Lake NP. I expected it would take me significantly longer to do this climb on my loaded bike than it did on my unloaded bike, but that turned out not to be the case. My legs were more rested today and I knew exactly what to expect as I climbed. These two things seemed to cancel out the fact that I was carrying about 30 extra pounds.

Starting down towards Roseburg after 13 miles

It was nice, although a bit chilly, to head down towards Roseburg. I knew I had a LOT of downhill today - starting down at 6000 feet and ending at about 500 feet - so I was looking forward to easy riding for most of the day. What I got initially was a good downhill to Diamond Lake and then a fair amount of climbing on rolling hills. Then a long downhill started and went on for many miles.

Diamond Lake

Rolling hills near Diamond Lake

Downhill...

More downhill

The initial downhill lasted about ten miles, then there was a bit of flat to rolling hills, then it repeated twice. After about 30 miles, there was actually some significant climbing, and then the downhills returned, but they weren't as steep and they were more often interrupted by flat or uphills. I stopped at the Dry Creek Store - nice place, and the first services on this route - after about 40 miles to have some coffee and a snack from my supplies. I had stopped once before this to snack and had learned NOT to go into into the beautiful, lush, forest along the road.The mosquitoes were very bad!

This descent reminded me a bit of riding through the Sierras because it had altitude signs along the road for every 500 feet of change - e.g. 6000, 5500, 5000, etc. I passed those signs pretty quickly on the long downhills. After 40 miles, I was down to 1500 feet, but still had 1000 feet of altitude to lose. It turned out that I also had several thousand feet of climbing ahead of me.

The Umqua river, which the road follows down, gets gentler after about 30 miles

Since I was going to Oakland, not Roseburg, I left OR 138 shortly after the town of Glide. Glide has the only restaurant on this route, so I ate a fairly big meal there - I had a very good breakfast before I started and an OK late lunch/early dinner at Glide. These were my only meals for the day. I find two big meals, and half a dozen snacks - usually a banana or apple and a bagel, possibly with some Nutella - mean I don't need a third meal.

My route to Oakland was North Bank Rd to US 99 to Oakland. I had about 25 miles left to ride when I turned onto North Bank Road. It is a really nice bicycling road, but, especially near US 99, it is very hilly and the hills are very steep. I greatly enjoyed riding the first dozen mile, but the last five miles became a bit of an endurance contest ;-{.

OR 138 near Glide

The gentle river after Glide

North Bank Road

Looking down at the river from North Bank Road

Hilly riding after 100 miles on a loaded bike

The last 8 miles on US 99 were gently uphill and into the wind. Before I rode then I stopped to recover from riding North Bank Road ;-}.

On the way to Oakland on 99
It looks like a horse was here recently...

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