Day 18

Starting mileage is 15878
Miles to date: 7039
States to date: 25

Today's route takes us north west to Bend Oregon on mostly secondary roads.


View 16a in a larger map

The terrain is pretty flat and desolate with very straight roads.  I measured this straight section at 13 miles, followed by another 13 mile straight section,  followed by another 13 mile straight section, you get the idea.  Not too surprisingly, occasionally they run unlimited road races in this part of the country.

Even on these back roads, we couldn't get away from the construction.  In the middle of nowhere, at least 60 miles from the nearest town (which didn't have any services), we got hung up in construction traffic.  The traffic handlers and follow drivers were very surprised to find a Lamborghinion these back roads.

Turns out they were cutting a rumble strip down the middle of the road.  It even though they swept up after the cutter there was still quite a bit of debris on the road for miles after the construction site.

We ran into a few showers along the way.  I'm continually surprised with the expanse of the terrain.  With the wide open plains it's possible to see where the rain stops, something that isn't possible along most areas of the east coast.

We passed in to Oregon near Denio, there wasn't much there.

As we got closer to our destination we got more into the mountains.

Crossing the grasslands we took out quite a few grasshoppers.  We don't seem to be able to get away from them.

We stopped in Bend Oregon.  With a population of 81000 or so, it's one of the larger cities in Oregon, but still less than one tenth the size of the county where we live.