Last night’s stayover was pretty amazing with the visit from Olaf, spikeball in the yard, a hose to rinse off our dirty bikes, and a cool, air-conditioned environment to put us to sleep. As opposed to the short ride yesterday, today was much longer, but we were going to a destination that we had been told about almost since the start of our Illini 4000 meetings with the current team. We had some fun along the road today with a bingo board of Illini 4000 happenings from Parker and met a couple of former Illinois students too. There was another popular campsite store, just like we were back in Yellowstone, and we ate our dinner around a campfire once again. Today was a tiring but memorable day within our summer journey.
Ride Overview
Mileage: 83.2 miles
Elevation: +3,723 ft. / -2,280 ft.
Points of Interest: Crater Lake
Tales of the Trail
The first part of the day had a peculiar feel to it as we looked back at the actual elevation map of the route. Coming out of La Pine, it really felt like we had a slight downhill because of how quickly and easily we were moving over the road. There were periods of going over 17 mph where truly we could have guessed we were putting in the effort of about 13-14 mph. There must have been a tailwind. That’s what it was! This was also the first morning in quite a while where we really could have considered wearing some warmer attire. Everyone had prepared for a normal roll out, but once we made it onto the road we were a little cold. The patches of sunshine between the trees were taken as slowly as possible and hands hid behind our backs to try to keep warm until the heat of the day started to roll in.
By the time we made it to the first rest stop, everyone was warm enough and we no longer had to worry about being cold. That concern could be put aside.
The next 18 miles to the second rest stop were much of the same. So unremarkable that we don’t even have a photo from anyone on the team to place in the gap between these paragraphs. We even rested at another gas station just to get us confused with where exactly in the day we were.
Between the second and third rest stops we did have some fun… and fear? There was a section of road after we had already done maybe half of the expected miles until we would rest again that from afar just appeared as if we were going into a wall. There were definitely some “oh nos” passed within groups and questions of whether we were ready to take on what was ahead. As we kept rolling over the miles though, the climb almost felt as if it moved further and further away. We were going uphill, but this supposed straight up ascent wasn’t feeling quite as bad as it looked. Don’t get me wrong, we were certainly using our energy and feeling the pain, but it was reassuring knowing that we were in the middle of what we had thought to be so hard and conquering it just as we had every other bit of road this summer.
At the third rest stop, we shuttled into Crater Lake National Park right to the bottom of the climb up to the caldera. The teams reconvened once everyone had their snacks and were driven to the drop off on the other side of the entrance by Aadit. This final climb of the day went up nearly 2,000 ft. beyond what we had already done! The ascent was slow and hot, but we were greeted by one of the most spectacular views of all. This is another moment where the pictures will do their talking.
After gathering the whole team at the top for pictures, we had an awesome descent that we took a little more cautiously than others in the past and made our way into the campsite. At the entrance was another general store that you know full well we had to inspect and purchase all of the snacks before going to sleep. They had a particularly good black cherry cream soda and orange soda that were only $1.25 so they were a hit with the team. We also saw they had donuts and kept mental notes for the morning. Everyone set up their tents and had dinner around the campfire as usual for one of our camping days. Aadit must have had time in the van to plan because he promposed to Maaike who agreed to join him at the I4K prom.
This was our first long day in a while, so we are all very tired tonight and it will be interesting to see if our bodies remember how to recover from this when we wake up in the morning.
