Through the land of cow pies and gopher holes

Monday, June 3

Our first day of riding was from Klammath Falls to...sorry, I don't exactly know. It was 66.3 miles from our starting point, and about 15 miles north of the town of Beatty.  We camped about 10 feet inside the first section of national forrest we came across about 30 minutes after it got dark. Anything before that would have meant stealth camping somewhere on private land or city/county land.  We followed the OC&E trail the entire day, briefly stopping for dinner at a convenience store in Sprague Lake. Some pictures appear below.

Kaden and Dante near the start of the OC&E trail:

As you can see, the day started out with the threat of rain. We waited in the motel until 9 a.m. before starting to avoid some light drizzle.

Stop near a river:

Navigating some minor impediments:

By this rest area (below) along the trail I was hurting and was thinking that this trip may be over in another day or so. The motel we stayed at had an ackward set of three stairs leading up to the bottom floor rooms and I managed to trip on them and go face down on them, twisting my left shoulder and right ankle. At the time the shoulder felt like the bigger problem but the issue ended up being the ankle, and by the time we hit this stop I was limping badly. Fortunately, it didn't affect my riding and a couple aspirin from the store in Beatty and a night of sleep fixed it.

The area between Sprague Lake and Beatty was a really mixed experience. There was some nice scenery but much of the trail was covered with grass, gopher holes and cow patties. On top of that there were gates about every half mile.

Shortly after this we headed uphill into the forrest. I didn't get any images of that because we were racing the darkness and the boys were getting cranky.