Monday, July 27th, 2015

Start/End: La Pine/Crater Lake, OR
Mileage: 84+
Weather: Another cool morning that stayed cool throughout the day with some wind

Another great start to the morning at the High Lakes Christian Church in La Pine, OR! We are so thankful for their generosity in hosting us for the night and not only providing an awesome dinner last night, but also a delicious breakfast in the morning, adding yoghurt and bagels with cream church to our morning oatmeal! Can you tell that we really love to eat? Today was an especially good day to eat a lot, because we had a long day with quite a bit of climbing ahead of us.

Today’s ride was dedicated to 2 family members of one of our riders, which really motivated her to support this cause. Her Grandpa Bohdan who passed away from leukemia not long after she was born, which meant she did not have the opportunity to meet him. Additionally, she wanted the team to ride for her Aunt Olga who was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a double mastectomy and has been cancer free for a few years.

In the light chill of the morning, we were off again, returning to US-97 heading south for about 50 miles. The wind was just right that we were able to really be cruising all morning at a decent pace and all of the groups stayed relatively close to each other. It was really nice. We passed through a few smaller towns along the route, but we did not stop since we were all pretty excited to get to Crater Lake. As we made our turn off of the highway towards the national park, we saw a hill that was stretched out before us to climb…after lunch.

We ate our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and mentally pumped ourselves up for what was about to happen. As we got on the road, we realized that we had turned into a slightly less favorable wind, but we fought on as we began our ascent up to the rim of the crater. This would last about 25 miles. It was not too steep, but it did just continue on. We actually ran into a group of riders with Trek Travel adventures whom we had met earlier in the day at a gas station! They were doing the same climb for the day once we got into the national park. The views were amazing. I can’t imagine going through this climb without the views of the cascade mountains in the distance and e forests. At one point, we crossed over the Pacific Crest Trail! As we neared the rim of the crater, the roads seemingly got much steeper, but we pushed on.

Then we saw the lake. It was beautiful, an icy blue color with dark blue and Aqua coloring around Wizard Island and the shoreline. Many groups stopped to take pictures, but got going again really quickly as the wind was so cold and the sun stayed behind clouds. We had about 4 miles until the summit and the. The rest would be downhill to our campsite. We took our final rest stop at Rim Village where some folks got some hot cocoa while others looked for mementoes to remind them of the occasion. After that, 8 miles of downhill! For some,this was fun, while others were a little more apprehensive of the sharper turns. We all made it down to our campsite safely and we’re glad for this long day to have come to an end…except that we were cold and the sun was still up.

We set up our tents and layered up for the long haul. We had a campfire at one of our sites, providing an excellent place to make s’mores and share stories. And after that, we were off to our tents, nestled in our sleeping bags….hoping the bear boxes at the campsite would keeps bears away from our tents during the night (spoiler alert! We didn’t see or hear any bears, thankfully). Tomorrow will be a shorter day…and maybe warmer?
-LAH