We really did make an early start this morning; up at 5am by my watch (the one that’s still on Pacific Time). We’d slept well, tucked in between the back of the motel and a line of RVs, and we were ready for a hot day’s cycling.
We even managed to get breakfast ready and pack up in near record time. It was all in an effort to beat the heat. It was due to be another day where the temperature would be flirting with 100 degrees. We wanted to make sure our climb and subsequent journey along the blisteringly hot Snake River Valley was done in the cooler part of the day.
We rejoined the route, taking the 71 out of town and up towards the Brownlee Pass at 4136ft. It was a 17 mile climb up a gentle gradient, and, thanks to that early start, it was neither hot nor busy with car traffic. It was still early enough that the sun hadn’t fully risen and much of the climb was shaded by the high peaks on either side of us.
We made it up there in good time then enjoyed good views and a fantastic descent that wound down a twisting canyon road. All the way down, we were the only ones on the road: not a single car passed us or overtook us. It meant we could be a little braver in terms of speeding along: Tom didn’t hit his brakes at all. I braked a little on the tighter turns!
We were heading down to the Brownlee Reservoir, named after the ferry service that ran here in the 1860s to serve gold miners.
The landscape around the reservoir was another complete change. It was dry, dusty beige-orange rock with hardly any vegetation. It felt like the surface of some weird planet. Add to that the fact that we were pretty much the only people on the road and it was easy to imagine we were pioneers, traveling through an unexplored desert.
The Brownlee reservoir empties into the Snake River. We stopped for a break at a very well-tended campsite run by the power company that owns the reservoir and dam. Then we followed the road alongside the reservoir, passing the dam and crossing the bridge into Oregon.
Curiously, although crossing the stateline officially put us back onto Pacific Time, the electricity company runs on Mountain Time, so for the next 12 miles, we’d still be on Mountain Time. I was pleased I hadn’t changed my watch.
A little further along the Brownlee-Oxbow Highway we passed another important marker: 4,000 miles.
It doesn’t seem like all that long ago that we waved goodbye to our friends in NYC and pedaled off across the Brooklyn Bridge.
With the thrill of 4000 miles in the saddle in mind, we decided to celebrate with an early lunch (depending on which timezone we were in). We found another great campsite near the Oxbow dam and grabbed an empty RV spot in the shade. We had a few vegetable and cheese wraps and then finished up the last few hobnobs (they were a melted, molten mess by this point and had to be eaten as a kind of oaty-chocolate sandwich).
Then it was the last 17 mile push to Halfway. By this point, whichever timezone we were in, it was boiling hot. The phrase “mad dogs and Englishmen…” came to mind as we pedaled uphill, through a canyon with zero shade. The road was still very lightly trafficked but, by now, it was probably due to the fact that only fools would be out in this weather. Fools and a couple of bike tourers. We sweated up a few more hills. The roads looked wet with mirages caused by the heat and the air we were breathing felt like it was coming straight out of a hairdryer. The only thing that our water had going for it was the fact that it was wet. But it was fun. And we knew there would be a shower waiting for us in Halfway.
After a series of climbs we reached the town of Halfway. It was a pretty place whose barns, meadows and mountains made it look a little bit Swiss.
We stopped at Wild Bill’s Cafe for some pie and ice cream and a beer (thus achieving beer of the day and dessert of the day in one sitting). The beer was an IPA from Terminal Gravity Brewery in Oregon. The pie was blueberry and made onsite.
We headed back outside into the heat – 98 degrees. We wheeled down to the motel and RV site that provides camping for cyclists. They had a spot in the RV site for $10 per person, or for $5 each we could camp in front of the barn and use the showers next to the garage. It was a good setup with clean showers and a nice patch of grass.
Showered and feeling refreshed, we walked into town to find somewhere to escape the heat. The library was shut, so we went to the second of the two bars in town. Finding that rather uninspiring, we sat on a couple of chairs in the town ‘square’. We were both soon too hot, so decided we’d have an early dinner and walked back over to Wild Bill’s (all these landmarks exist within about 300ft of each other).
We had a good dinner, and hung out for as long as possible to avoid going back to our tent which, we presumed, would be the temperature of a blast furnace.
