Tuesday, July 28th, 2015

Start/End: Klamath Falls, OR/Mt. Shasta, CA
Mileage: 82+
Weather: Pleasant morning with a warmer afternoon (no jackets today!)

Hey everyone! Today we had an amazing, but long day. We crossed out final state line, met amazing people along the route and finally had a day when we were not freezing. I am excited to tell you about the day but we are actually going to be doing an early wake-up to avoid the heat tomorrow, so I am going to head to bed soon with the rest of the team, but tomorrow this post will be updated :) Happy trails and thanks for all of your support!
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Updated:
PS: I forgot to put this with yesterday’s blog, but riding into Klamath Falls, we saw our first sign for San Francisco! Ah! This is exciting, sad and a little scary for us.

Thank you for being patient in waiting to hear about the ride today! We awoke at the Yeti’s Lair, or The Ledge, which not only agreed to host us for the evening, but also provided an amazing lunch cookout and a delightful pasta dinner with garlic bread and salad. It was amazing and we were fed very well by our wonderful hosts. Thank you so much for being friends of this organization.

After getting ready for the day, we travelled over to the Gathering Grounds Coffeeshop/Cafe in Klamath. The owner of the shop generously volunteers to host us for breakfast, providing blueberry pancakes and some delicious coffee in a great atmosphere. We are so glad that the large influx of our team in orange did not scare away any other customers, as we had the opportunity to share about Illini 4000, even getting the opportunity to get a few portraits, including one of the shop’s owner, Brandon, a cancer survivor.

It was such a meaningful morning and we are so happy that it started this way. We could not have asked for a more welcoming community. Thank you so much for everyone in Klamath Falls for making our short stay such a wonderful stay.

Our day just kept being great as we got on the road. Before we even reached our first rest stop at mile 25, we crossed our final state line into California. This was very exciting for groups and a little emotional for some. We had an impromptu dance party at the state line, likely causing confusion from vehicles passing, but we were excited. Not long after the sign, we would see another sign saying that San Francisco 357 miles away…so perhaps we are not as close as we thought.

That is ok, though, because we were traveling to Mt. Shasta, a huge (~14,600 ft peak) snow covered mountain that we had been seeing yesterday afternoon. We passed through a very flat area in the morning that had signs warning about blowing dust, and even saw some pretty cool dust devils far off in the distance. We wouldn’t realize how dusty we got until later when we cleaned, but it was kind of remarkable that anyone let us in :)

Then we transitioned into some decent climbing as we began to conquer the foothills around Mt. Shasta. It was a steady climb and the day was already a little warm, but like some of many other climbs, it seemed to last quite a while, remarkably, though, the entire team conquered the hills with an admirable effort and attitude, really honing in on their hill-climbing confidence. We ate lunch near the summit, which unfortunately had been impacted by wildfires and was being cleared. Before long, though, we were on the road again. Shortly we reached a summit and began to descend before another good climb to the second summit of the day. After that, we had a beautiful descent into the valley around the mountain, which just seemed so close, so big. The descent for the day was very enjoyable, especially since the shoulder of the road was in such good condition. The wind in our faces definitely help relieve us of the summer heat we had felt during the climbing.

As we descended, we entered the town of Weed, CA which is home to the Hi-Lo Cafe which had been recommended to us for their milkshakes and malts. Nearly the entire team took a break out of the sun and got an afternoon treat. It was a huge shake, but somehow we ate them and then biked for 11 more miles to our stay over for the evening. It was a nice forested road we travelled on and was shaded in most areas, which was great. It unfortunately was not downhill the entire way and did involve a few hills, but we got through it and arrived at our stayover.

It had been a very long day, especially with our later departure, state sign stop and milkshakes, so it was incredible when we arrived, our gracious hosts had left a pasta dinner in a crock pot with accompanying salad and bread for us to eat. Nobody went hungry and we were all quite tired. Tomorrow we will be waking up early to hopefully avoid the heat…not quite looking forward to that, but always looking forward to new adventures and new people to meet!
-LAH