Last night I got restless so went on a 2 mile hike before calling it a day. There are a number of spectacular falls in the Columbia River Gorge.

This morning, it took me about 2 and 1/2 hours to make a simple breakfast, pack up the tent and everything else before I got moving.

Todays ride would have qualified as one of Dave H’s more difficult R2D2 prep rides. It turned hot and by the time I was done, I had covered 56 miles and 5200 vertical feet of climbing. This means I have now covered 226 miles.
Today there was one steep climb where I got off twice and walked up two short steep sections. Lower gearing really would not helped much as I was going so slow, the loaded bike was getting hard to handle. It was much tougher than yesterday, but I’m clear through the Cascade Mountain Range. When I decided to go west to east, I knew I would start with some tough climbs, but I think that battling headwinds is worse, and at this latitude, the prevailing winds are from the west.

Today the winds were strong and from the west, which helped me some. At lunch, I enjoyed watching the kite surfers at Hood River. I talked to one fellow and he mentioned that the water had warmed up to about 50 degrees. That’s way too cold for a former Floridian like me.

The old Columbia Gorge road is now closed to cars in many places and has some great views. It even has a couple of tunnels for the pedestrians and cyclists. At one overlook, a couple riding e-bikes offered to take my picture. We talked a bit and they asked me if I was keeping a blog. I said yes and sent them the link.

Later, down the road was this stairs, with a place set up to run your bicycle tires on as you go up or down. There was one five mile section where the old road was closed and I had to ride on the shoulder of I-84. Actually, because of the wide shoulder, I felt slightly safer there than on route 30 west of Portland.

As I approached The Dalles, I gave up trying to reach a campground that was another 12 miles on and found a room at a Motel 6. I tried the Holiday Inn, but they wanted over $200 a night, which was too rich for my blood. It’s funny but I’m starting to realize that finding accommodations when traveling by bike is similar to traveling by car, except distances are a lot less. You can travel by car in one hour in what takes a whole day by bike.

Since I’m not real fond of restaurant food, I picked up a potato, a carrot, and an onion in order to make a soup for supper. Produce is one of the few things that you buy at the grocery store in quantities suitable for a single meal. I located a park with a picnic table on the River a mile or so away and went down and made my simple soup.