Day 9: Sisters, OR to Redmond, OR

Miles: 21

Elevation (ft): 700

Total trip mileage: 290

We woke up well rested and not totally ready to leave Sisters. We ate breakfast with Debbie, our host, and talked about travelling, politics, Oregon, etc. As we were packing up to leave, a handful of her Portland Dragon Boat team members (aka The Golden Dragons) showed up. The conversation with these women continued for over an hour, and we learned that they are all in their 80s, retired and extremely active. They were a riot!

We finally hit the road around noon and decided to bike around Sisters to check it out. It’s modeled after an old western town and surrounded by snow-capped mountains. After taking in the mountain vistas, we stopped in a couple of shops before grabbing lunch on our way out of town. We met two British cyclists, Cat and John, also doing the Transam. They are riding a recumbent tandem bike and seemed to have had a worse time on the mountain pass than we did (they didn’t reach the summit until 9 pm after having to push their bike part of the way). We exchanged contact info and hope to run into them again.

To rest our legs before the next mountain pass, we are doing two shorter days and followed highway 126 today into Redmond. A couple of miles outside of Sisters, the terrain turned into the Oregon High Desert, which is a drastic change from the Western side of the Cascades. At one point when we stopped for water, we looked back and could see all of the mountain peaks looming in the distance. The weather was beautiful for our ride, sunny with a high in the low 70s. The evenings, however, are cooler with nighttime lows dropping into the high 30s.

We set up our campsite at the Expo Center RV Park and are writing this while enjoying a beautiful sun setting behind the mountains 😄