Day 68 - Ontario, OR to Juntura, OR

Today was a little all over the place and on the whole we had to fly by the seat of our pants. To start, recent forest fires in Washington and northern Idaho have caused quite a ruckus and emergency relief has settled in Juntura as a home base for operation. Because of this, our host had to cancel on us and we were left without a place to stay. Fortunately, we found a campsite that was 6 miles down a gravel road that could accommodate us on such short notice, which upped our total expected mileage from 71 to 77 miles. During the ride through the desert though, there was a construction site where the workers wouldn't let us through. Many of us decided to hitch rides with strangers all the way into town. Due to these complications, my bike ride ended up being about 20 miles shorter than it was originally supposed to be.   

Eastern Oregon is desolate to say the least. For the first time no one had service for almost the entire ride. Once we left Ontario there was nothing but a tiny gas station with one pump until we reached Juntura which didn't have much more than a cafe and some campgrounds. 

The constructions workers stopped us once we got to the construction zone and told us that we couldn't ride on the road. They offered to shuttle us in their pilot truck but they were only taking us 2 by 2 and sometimes they wouldn't take any of us at all. After sitting around for close to a hour we realized it was going to take all day for us to get through. So we decided to ask random people driving pickups if we could ride with them.   

The majority of the construction zone was ridable in my opinion; we've been on much worse. So I was sitting anxiously in the truck bed, upset about missing the ride. But then we drove by a section of wet tar that would have been impossible to traverse. Even after the construction zone technically ended, the road wasn't completely paved. None of the riders felt compelled enough to stop the makeshift pickup caravan so we ended up riding into town where we ate lunch at a cafe as we waited for host arrangements to be made. I guess this is all a part of the adventure. Sometimes you have no control over being able to complete a ride. 

We camped tonight about 6 miles from Juntura at Chukar park. With no cell phone service we quickly ran out of things to do. After making bracelets, crocheting, giving/getting massages, playing guitar, and relaxing in the river we ran out of things to do and just hung around until it was dark enough to go to bed. (Oh, and we crossed into the Pacific time zone! But no one knew until our phones changed the next day when got service the next day.)

The Catty Corner:
Erika: "Wait... What? I just found broccoli in my cleavage and I didn't eat any today!"