honky tonkin'

September 13, 2018 — Idaho → Oregon

Fantastic day. I'm feeling good about the final stretch to the Pacific. I changed the oil again this morning and headed through lots of farmland on the way out of Idaho. There were a few stretches of fun gravel road, but it was easy riding. I stopped for a quick lunch just before crossing the border into Oregon, and then it was mostly windy gravel roads through some hill country and into Mahleur National Forest. I got drizzled on a couple times but mostly skirted around rain storms yet again.

After miles of good gravel and some pavement, the trail climbed up a rocky road that got tighter as it got higher. There was nothing too technical, but the sun and shadows from the pines made it tricky to see rocks at times. Once at the summit, it followed a ridge, with bushes barely wider than the bars — it wasn't quite single track but was the closest to it I'd gotten on the TAT so far.

The rest of the afternoon was more gravel, dirt, and a bit of pavement through pine forests in the Strawberry Wilderness. The trees were tall and some sections passed through thoroughly burned areas.

I came down a canyon road into John Day as the sun was setting and stopped for the night.