Monday September 10

Yesterday was a rest day in Sisters, and what a lovely day it was!  Sisters is a town of about 2500 people, but it was hopping with the annual Folk Festival and other tourist traffic.  In addition to numerous outdoor music venues there are about three streets of lovely little shops, restaurants, coffee shops, an ice cream shop and a bakery.  I went in each and every one of them.  One good thing about being on a bike trip with limited luggage space is that the urge to actually purchase anything is somewhat curtailed.  I capped the day off with meeting some of the gals and their local friends for dinner at a Mexican restaurant.

Back to business this morning.  These pictures were taken outside the hotel (the BW Ponderosa Lodge) and during our map meeting.

A rather new post office built in the old west style.

A view over to the Three Sisters, which we continued to see much of the morning.

This lonely deer had about 6 friends with him until I stopped and took out my camera.

As we left Sisters, we quickly moved from Ponderosa Pine forest to agricultural land - both crops and animals (cows, horses, sheep, goats, alpaca, etc).  We passed a vineyard or two, but I didn’t get any pictures of those.

We rode by an alpaca ranch.  There had to be thousands of them there!  So cute.  Not sure what age they were but they certainly were frisky!  They had all recently been shorn, which just added to the cuteness factor.  I could have stayed there for an hour just watching them romp.  But, alas, it was time to move on.

I rode much of the day with Pat, so a few of these pictures are courtesy of her..........

If I remember correctly from the 2016 Sierra Cascades ride, these are Broken Top (l) and the Three Sisters.

I thought these were great names for ranches.................

Next up - Smith Rock State Park.  It would be worth coming back here to hike for three or four days. Beautiful!

One activity I have no interest in trying, though, is this person’s high wire act!

Here’s a picture of the five women who were on the 2015 Atlantic Coast ride together - Patricia, Barbara, me, Mary and Sue W.

Fall can’t be far away.  They were harvesting pumpkins today.

Beautiful river crossing.......

Scenery shot as we’re about 5 miles from our destination of Prineville.

A local with a sense of humour........

Not sure if this is the Crook County Courthouse or City Hall.  In either case, it’s lovely.

Speaking of lovely, our BW hotel is also lovely.  Some nice, fun sculptures outside too.

What a great day this was!  Perfect riding conditions, with a tailwind (again) for most of the day.  Lots of interesting scenery and a great riding companion (Patricia).

Stats for the day:
93 km / 58 miles from Sisters OR to Prineville OR
1547 feet up / 1851 feet down
Temps:  9C - 28C