Last night I fell asleep lying on my sleeping pad. By morning, the air cooled nicely. On the bike at 5:45 to catch the cool morning air. I headed west on Hwy 22 toward Slayton, 38 miles away. For 20 miles I kept seeing burned hillsides and scrapes where buildings existed prior to the fires. My hopes of finding a cafe quickly did not materialize. I turned north toward Silverton on a county road, which ran up and down for 17 miles past tidy farms. Crops included grass seeds, orchards of hazelnut trees, Christmas tree farms, and flowers for their seeds (like these poppies in the photo). The economic status of local inhabitants seemed to improve markedly after Slayton. In Silverton I had a breakfast sandwich and coffee at a cafe, called Betsy to check in, and decided to continue north to Woodward on Hwy 214. Then I’d ride north on Hwy 99E. In Woodward I stopped at a Safeway for a half-gallon of chocolate milk. At 1:40 pm, the afternoon air didn’t seem that hot. I reached Canby, my day’s destination and kept going. At 4 pm, I reached Clackamas and realized I’d had enough. I checked into the Clackamas Hotel and Suites. It turned out that today’s high temperature was about 18 degrees cooler than yesterday across Oregon. Unintentionally, I biked 105 miles today, my first century ride.
