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TUE 8/3 [rest day in Baker City]
Monday was kind of a hard day on the road for me -- not so much
physically, although there were lots of ups and downs, but more
mentally. We rode all day through an unchanging, somewhat bleak
landscape (see photo for what the view was like for just about the
entire ride) that I found, especially after the first 20 miles or so,
more than a little boring. Just mile after mile after mile of very
arid range land, chock full of pretty much nothing, leading to a ride
that at times felt like it was never going to end.
But end it did. And speaking of end, near the end of the ride was an
opportunity to visit the National Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive
Center, which had gotten some good reviews from earlier riders -- the
Oregon Trail was a pretty interesting historical phenomenon, after
all. Unfortunately, the NHOTIC is almost completely inaccessible to
bicycles, stuck at the top of a ridiculously long and steep side road,
and at that point I just didn't feel like scaling K2. Dennis and Hugh
braved the ascent, and said the ride up was miserable but the place
itself pretty interesting. One fact that stuck out; along the whole
2000 mile length of the trail, Dennis said, there's a grave every 80
(feet? yards? whatever; a lot of people never made it), on average.
People were either that desperate for a better life, or they had no
idea what they were in for.
Our lodgings in Baker City are in the Oregon Trail Motel, hard by the
swift-flowing (right outside my window, actually) Powder River. We had
a fine dinner out on Monday night -- courtesy, in large part, of John,
Dawn, and Mike -- at [somebody] Brown's Brew Pub. Spotty service --
Barry was new on the job; Robin (again! the man is cursed!) didn't get
his meal until most of us were almost done eating -- but tasty food
(eggplant parmesan), and some tasty beer, too(*).
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And at least one, "Hot Blonde," that wad a real mistake. (I ordered
the 7-beer sampler to start, so I tasted everything that was
available.) There is simply no reason to infuse a beer with jalapeño
peppers -- it's every bit as bad an idea as it sounds.
Jalapeno beer - yuck. I had to drink one as part of my "Quest" at the BU pub to have all 52 beers on the menu and decided the "hold nose and chug" method would be best. And maybe it was, but that doesn't mean that I liked it.
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