Trans America Trail - 2008

Day 16 – Lakeview, OR to Bend, OR.

Miles: 175 (road distance as per GPS)

Hotel: Super8 Bend, Oregon

Commentary:

Day 16 dawned bright with no signs of rain but still pretty chilly. I kitted up and headed out of Lakeview.

My first attempt at getting on the trail, right in Lakeview, was met with a double padlocked gate. My 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th attempts were the same!

I think Lakeview is being developed and people are locking their property (or what they think is their property) up.

Wasn’t a problem though as I just zoomed the GPS out and criss-crossed until I could hit the trail.

This day turned out to be another great one; the forest roads were fast and flowing and the navigation was relatively easy.

The forest was so close that I couldn’t get enough places to take decent photographs:

This one was where I could just see out between the pine trees.

These are some of the roads I was on. In places they where tight and twisty, 2^nd gear stuff, but elsewhere it was flat in 5^th with the rear spinning up beneath. Great fun!

There were quite a few meadows like this, most of them beautiful.

Not sure what these are for but they’ve been there at least two years.

Paul Howey has a similar picture on his site – www.transamtrail.co.uk

There was a section along this pylon road which was good fun too.

A fair bit of soft sand followed by a gully and another river crossing.

The water was pretty deep in the crossing I decided again to walk it over.

I came across a tree that had fallen over the road and took this picture.

Someone had cut a way for a car to get around it.

I thought it was an interesting and unusual shot but by the time I had seen about 50 of them they were just boring.

I followed the trail all the way to Silver Lake without any real problems and decided to gas up there.

Unfortunately there’s no gas on Sundays in Silver Lake!!!

I got talking to some Triumph riders and they said to head over to Christmas Valley, about 25 miles away.

I could have gone to La Pine but they were a bit further away so Christmas Valley it was.

Christmas Valley turned out to be pretty desolate but the people were friendly enough.

An interesting thing about Oregon was that there was always someone to meet you at the pump.

Just a friendly greeting and asking you if you needed help or directions. Weird really as no other state did the same.

After I gassed up I decided to have a look at Fort Rock and head up the Fremont Highway.

This was a beautiful drive and it was a lovely day.

I went through La Pine and up to the Super8 in Bend (should have stayed at La Pine)

Journal Quote:

Had a good long ride through the forests of Oregon. There was some tricky sections but nothing like Nevada. Got a bit lost on more than one occasion! Thankfully I had the GPS and the work I put in on the maps. Had some very fast sweeping forest roads. Got over 60 mph on a few of them – nobody around. Not many views as the pines were in the way most of the time. But some of the forest was open and took some great pictures. Getting onto the trail in Lake view was a pain with locked gates and private property signs every where.

Loads of trees down over the roads but no problems in getting around them as most were cleared away. Rode along the pylon road for a while and came to a river crossing that looked ok but smelled of cow dung. Had to walk the bike over that one too. Got onto the tarmac and headed for Bend Oregon. Got there to the Super8 and checked in, headed to Walmart and got some airtime, took the bike to the wash and lubed the chain and checked it over. Then hit the sack as I was pooped.