Day 9-I Must Have Really Needed That Sleep!

It’s not often that I can sleep in my tent after the sun comes up, but today I did just that. When I looked at the time, it was almost 7:30! Doug even slept until 6:00! It hasn’t really been the miles so much as getting to bed late. Doing this blog sometimes keeps me up until way past “biker midnight”. It’s okay, though, because, like today, we had a short easy day. Time to recover. 

We left Honeyman at 9:30. The hikers were long gone, and DJ (who lingered a bit too) had left. He came over and gave me his card with his blog, since he lives in Vancouver. 

We backtracked to Florence and the 101/126 junction where we said goodbye to the Coast, and headed inland. Saw this mural on the way out of town. 

Pretty cool. 

Hwy 126 has a nice wide shoulder, and it was flat. There was a fair amount of traffic, but with the shoulder, it was fine. We were riding along the Suislaw River. 

Nice and calm. 

There was this interesting bit of “property”.

House for Sale…Watertop property, close to transportation. First step is a doozy out the front door. (When you don’t have beautiful coastline to photograph, you resort to oddities such as this).

A bit later, Doug shouted, “Elk!” Sure enough, there were four Roosevelt Elk across the river watching us. 

What you looking’ at???

It was nice to finally see some elk, since we’ve been seeing the road signs warning about them for days. 

Mapleton was where we departed from 126 onto Hwy 36, a much quieter, albeit no shoulder, road. Earlier, we had pulled off on one of the Lane County Park boat ramp sites for a snack. There we met two women, Claire and Janeen, from Bend, getting ready to kayak down the river to Florence. We had a nice chat with them. 

Hwy 36 is new territory for me. It was getting close to lunchtime, and I suspected there might be another Lane County wayside in our near future. A good spot for lunch. There was, and there was this strange collection of…stuff at the base of a tree. 

We reached our destination of Swisshome a little before 2:00. It was only 27 miles today, but there isn’t any known camping until Richardson County Park on Fern Ridge Reservoir not far from Eugene. Even then, tomorrow will be a longer day (with more climbing). 

We are staying at a Cyclist Only camp spot behind the First Evangelical Church in Swisshome. Dave and his wife Trudy have been here since 1969. Dave and his son Brad came down to make sure we knew where everything is. There’s water, a sani-can, and an outlet for charging. There’s also a playground, but I think we are a little too old. It does, however, make a good spot to dry the rain fly.

That’s the church in the background. 

 They just brought out the picnic tables this morning, and stacked some firewood by the fire ring. It’s awesome that they provide this for cyclists. Interestingly, he seemed to think we were getting a late start. I don’t quite understand that…but I suppose some people take a much more leisurely approach. 

I think we’ll make some dinner here soon. Might be an evening to pull out the deck of cards…