Day 6: Condon to Mitchell South on little Highway 19, through the town of Fossil, further south on the even smaller Highway 207. This day was a trip through countryside where geologic time

is everywhere in evidence. It was also the longest and most strenous bicycling leg of the trip. Sixty-five miles and four climbs - tiring and spectacularly beautiful. The picture/menu on the top of each of these pages was taken on the second and easiest of the four climbs - Butte Creek Pass, 3700+ ft. That's why John looks so fresh and happy. By the 4th climb, well, he wasn't looking quite that chipper! From Condon (population 500) to Mitchell (population 160).

Craggy tors of stratified rock loomed up on both sides of the highway. The town of Fossil actually has some fossil beds right near the high-school football field where the public can go fossil hunting and keep whatever is found. The John Day Fossil Bed National Monument is somewhere just off this route. Ranches offer "thunderegg" hunting (crystal filled lava covered rocks that are spewed out of volcanos). It's just geology, geology, and more geology along these roads.

At the bottom of Butte Creek Pass, just before turning on to Highway 207 and the 3rd and longest climb of the day we stopped to take the picture on the right. The scenery was actually much more spectacular toward the top of Butte Creek Pass, but we were so wrapped up in watching it go by as we sped down the hill that we neglected to stop and take a picture. Finally, after about 7 hours on the bikes we coasted down the last mountain pass into the little town of Mitchell.

Unlike all my previous trips, the towns we stayed in this time were so small and had so few accommodations (often only one hotel) that I felt compelled to make reservations in advance. Tonight we had a reservation at The Oregon Hotel , the ONLY hotel in Mitchell. Mitchell is so small that if you walked through town (on Main Street) and blinked, you could still miss it. But size has nothing to do with "character" and Mitchell had character and characters in abundance.

The hotel was another old, restored, historic hotel, only this one had burned down a couple of times and been washed away in a flood, so the original building of 100 years ago had long since ceased to exist. It had more of a B&B feel to it, more like a house than a hotel, but very nice and comfortable.

We were pretty famished after our long, arduous ride, so we headed to the Little Pine Cafe next to the hotel as soon as we'd checked in, unloaded the bikes, and showered. The Little Pine Cafe was just about to close - early because the proprietor was out of town and his mother was running the place. But they not only made us lunch (hamburger and fries, and about

5 iced tea refills for poor dehydrated John), but they also made us up some turkey sandwiches for dinner because we all knew there wasn't any place else to eat in Mitchell. In the Little Pine Cafe we met the only other touring cyclists we saw on the whole trip. They were four guys in their early 20s who had cycled all the way from Washington D.C. and were just a couple of days from the end of their 3-month tour to Florence, Oregon on the Pacific Coast. After dinner-to-go from the Little Pine Cafe, we met one of the local characters, the matriarch of a hippie family that had bought the town's "general store" about 10 months ago. In that time she had managed to learn the entire history of Mitchell, from the floods of the 1930s to present day politics, and changing demographics - and boy could she talk. We stood in the middle of Main Street (not much traffic in a town of 160 people) and listened to her stories for a couple of hours.

Bear in its cage...

Let's see, there was the ex-professional wrestler who owned the local gas station and kept a domesticated bear in a cage by the fuel pumps - occasionally putting on an exhibition for anyone who wanted to see the bear's tricks. There was the guy who ran the local tire store and was the cousin of millionaire Les Schwab who owns a huge chain of tire stores all across the northwest, thanks to some seed money from this cousin who hasn't seen a dime in the way of "thanks" from Les. And the 90 year old retired doctor who inherited the family farm that comprises most of the acreage of Mitchell. She runs it with the help of one of the extended hippie family who acts as chauffer, shopper, nursemaid, and companion to the old woman - sort of a Driving Miss Daisy story.