Oregon!!!

Yesterday saw us cross yet another time zone, 3500 miles, thousands of ft of climbing once again, and the border into Oregon!! I can't quite believe we're in our final state with only 8 days left! The past two days we have been cycling through Hell's Canyon, which begins in Idaho and goes into Oregon. Despite it's scenic beauty, we were both glad to leaving it behind today; after 2 days of the same scenery, extremely hot weather (as there is no breeze down there in the canyon) and loads of hills,it all got a bit too much! Glad to report though that today we have arrived in a city of 7,000 people, and have the luxury of a motel and rest day tomorrow. Perfect. I thought that as time went on I wouldn't need my rest days as much but it seems as though just as you're conquering one aspect of suffering, so another one comes along, and you are therefore ALWAYS in need of a rest day.

Two nights ago we camped in the grounds of a motel and RV park in a town called Cambridge. This was fine, despite the huge RV next to us whom had a little yappy dog that decided to bark until all hours and poop all over the lawn we were camping on - when we arrived there were sticks poking out of the ground about every 2 metre square where the early arrivers of the group had scouted out dog poop! After about 20 minutes of Robin and I 'debating' where the tent should go (we always spend this long 'debating' as we have different criteria; I like it flat as I cannot sleep whilst rolling down hill and Robin likes the ground soft so it doesn't bend the pegs. We both agree on the fact that it should be in the shade which helps but trying to find all criteria on a ground full of dog poop is quite trying! We finally get it up just in time for dinner (luckily we were not cooking!). The highlight of this town was the ice cream/desert/cafe we went into after dinner. All 10 of us ordered different varieties of desert or ice cream and we all waited about 10 minutes per ice cream cone (which is a long wait when you're thinking about getting your beauty sleep for tomorrow's ride), except for Robin's 1 scoop huckleberry ice cream in a waffle cone, which seemed to be special in that it took about 40 minutes to arrive, in which time, the waitress had served the table next to us 3 1 scoop huckleberry ice cream's in a waffle cone. Much to the group's amusement and Robin's distress!