greetings from Prairie City OR

We're in Prairie City OR after a most amazing day of biking - a long day but through some of the most spectacular true Western scenery.

We camped last night in a little town park in Mitchell OR, pop. 170 but still big enough to have a high school football team. Mitchell is a former mining/logging outposts many miles from other towns. The California yuppies have yet to screw this town up and it still retains its rural crusty chutzpah. The store clerk didn't have tortillas so she went home next door and got some out of her fridge.

We had a long climb through Ochoco Pass yesterday and some incredible old growth poderosa pine stands. Today we got an early jump on another long steep climb to the top of Keys Creek Pass. The ride down passed through some of the most magnificent western scenery I have ever experienced: canyon walls of basalt columns in the early morning light. The drop ended at Picture Gorge in the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, so named because of many Native American pictographs - we didn't get to see them cause we were in a hurry and the Park Service folks won't tell you where they are for fear they will be vandalized.

The rest of the ride was through valleys of grazing cattle and irrigated alfalfa and hay, and a handful of small towns ending at Prairie City, where we camp tonight.

I hope to get photos loaded in Baker City on Monday morning.