Distance: ~55 miles
Ascent: ~1430 ft
Weather: sunny, uncomfortably warm later in the afternoon
Starting time: probably around 9am?
Road conditions: there was a good amount of traffic coming out of Sisters, but the shoulder was wide so it wasn’t too bad. We didn’t have too many mishaps at the start this time, but the problems built up as the day went on. We stopped at the Walmart in Redmond so my dad could find a charger for his watch, but apparently they couldn’t physically find it in store. This stop took at least 30-40 minutes so that was a bit of a bummer. Leaving Redmond, we gambled and took Highway 370 instead of 126, since it seemed like it might have had less traffic. Instead, it had semi trucks and no shoulder. After 2-3 semis passing with definitely less than 3ft of clearance, I decided to pull off 370 onto a road that seemingly cut south straight back to 126 (thus avoiding backtracking through Redmond). Unfortunately, the road turned into gravel (which is workable with our relatively wide tires), and then loose dirt (which we couldn’t bike on at all, so we had to turn back. We made the decision to continue on with 370, and it ended up working out. The trucks seemed to all be destined for a construction site only a few miles past where we tried to go off-road, and it was relatively smooth sailing after this point. Unfortunately, this little maneuver cost us quite a bit of time, so we were low on water and morale coming into Prineville.
Food: hotel breakfast, snack bar, large Starbucks mocha Frappuccino, instant noodles with tuna.
Highlights: not much tbh. Lake Ochoco is nice though!
Lowlights: mostly unenjoyable day. I think the actual lowlight was having our campground neighbors play loud music until ~1am, and then talk loudly until 4:30am (!!!). I remember finally falling asleep as the sun was rising. Kind of unbelievable!