Day 10:  Wednesday, July 6, 2005 Well, my first catastrophy—I left the charger and battery for my camera at the condo in Bend and they have to ship it to me in Baker City so have to preserve the battery I have for 2 more days—thus not many photos today.

This was our fourth pass to cross so I had to get a shot of that. Their sign says 4369 and my Garmin said 4360.  We showed a climb so far of 1525 and it took us one and a half hours to get to the summit which was 6 miles from the motel.  The next 6 miles took 16 minutes and the rest of the day went at a much quicker pace too.

There were painted words of encouragement the last couple of miles up to the pass. Don't stop now    You can do it      Almost there     Not yet    Good job     You call this a hill?     This is nuttin      Piece of cake You can see the top      ( smiley face) and There's the top     Go for it                    AWSOME!

The scenery today was really the best for cycling because there were fewer tall trees and we could see for miles—fields of yellow mustard then green hay then golden brown foothills with a few dark green pines and then the background of rugged dark green tree covered mountains and this was viewed across a winding river which the road followed down the mountain and then another as we enjoyed the mild climb into John Day. And all of this was under a beautiful blue sky with lots of puffy clouds that gave us a lot of much needed shade! Lots of irrigation in the hay fields all along the route today and they were set so we actually got some nice mist as we passed.

All the talk of folks yesterday that there was no food to be had at Dayville was wrong! Just no sit down café but there was a neat Mercantile store that had about anything you could want and we enjoyed it very much! Breakfast at 6 a.m. and a light snack in Dayville – we were ready for a steak dinner tonight and The Outpost Pub and Grill was great! We are off to bed early again and intend to get an early start again tomorrow but this time The Outpost opens for breakfast at 5 a.m. so I do not have to do microwave scrambled eggs again—thank goodness! They did get us up the hill though.