July 5: Day 53

Today was a short ride day and what a great idea that was. George rode early to get into the town of Sisters, which is short for Three Sisters (named after a chain of three mountains in the area). The views of the mountains are nice in the town and the town is quite cute. George did decide to go a bit longer towards the Santiam pass. The original plan for him was to take the McKenzie pass, which is suppose to be very pretty. The pass gets a lot of snow and it usually does not open 'till early July. We had met some TranAmers (in Wyoming) who said that they were on the pass the day it opened. They had just plowed it and no cars were allowed to get on it at that time. But turns out that the pass is now closed for construction and they do not let cars or bikes on it. So, basically, the pass is closed in winter due to snow and in summer for construction... go figure. Thus we have to take the longer (by about 20 miles), less steep but heavier traffic, Santiam pass. George ended the ride by 10:30 and the traffic was pretty bad on it already. So, he will get out there early again tomorrow to get through that area. He only has about 180 miles (wow, that's all) left 'till we get to our final destination of Florence (yeah..). I did a quick drive through tour of the "Smith Rock Park", which has nice views of the cliffs. This park is known as one of the best places for rock climbing. Later in the day, we went sight seeing around Bend area to the Lava Monument and Lave River Caves, and drove up to the Pilot Butte Mountain Summit. The Lava River Cave was the bomb. We finally found a cave (which we have been searching for, for a long time)that you can go around in, without a guided tour. There are no lights there and you have to bring a flashlight (which of course we forgot), as obviously its very dark in there. Its about 1/2 mile one way and we rented a lantern for this. The ending part of the cave was awesome as it was really narrow and low, we had to crawl (on our hands and knees) to get to the end. This was especially tricky while trying to hold on to the lantern and my bag (that among other things, had the camera for this posted picture, in it). We had a great time in there. This is as close as we are going get to Spelunking (caving) on this trip.

We went from Redmond, OR to Sisters, OR
Total Miles: 37