Tonight I was back in Takoda's celebrating again, this time internally cheering the completion of P48. I know Betty would have planned a party but I'm not that organized! So I ordered the chicken.
Having finished the actual perimeter yesterday I was ready to head home today. The shortest route home just didn't seem appropriate so I had decided on the scenic route. Scott had told me about the McKenzie Highway and said it would be a great ride. So I picked a route up and over the Siuslaw National Forest for a great ride from the coast to Corvalis.
The last thing I thought I would be dealing with in mid-August was cold weather, but the last two days have been chilly with the sun struggling to burn off the coastal fog. This morning was the same situation, low hanging fog along the coast holding temperatures down. Yesterday, as I pulled into Waldport, the time/temperature clock told me it was 60 degrees at 4 p.m.
This morning I would guess the temperature was in the high 40's when I started climbing inland. I was 15 miles along before I had climbed high enough to break out of the fog. By that time I was fully involved in mountain dancing my way east through an endless series of 20 to 45 mph curves under dense tree cover. It was delightful.
I stopped in Philomath, just west of Corvallis, to get gas. Somehow the fact that the station sat between two one way streets escaped my notice. There were no signs posted to indicate that the one exit was east bound only, the other west bound only. Thinking I would circle around the block to get back on track I headed east on west bound Highway 20.
I'm not sure if it was the pick-up that honked when I went past, the fact that the lines on the road were all white (no yellow down the middle) or the semi that was coming directly at me but I figured I was out of position somehow! "Do a U-Turn" was my mantra, even though The Girls didn't say a word. You'd think they'd scream or something!
From Corvallis I went south on 99W South, even though The Girls found their voice and tried to put me on the parallel route of I-5. It was virtually flat and straight, a real anti-pasta before dessert.
The dessert started on Highway 126 east of Eugene, as it headed up the McKenzie River on its way to McKenzie Bridge. The route was pretty but not what I had expected based on Scott's enthusiasm.
It wasn't until I stopped to take a break at McKenzie Bridge that I recalled another word that Scott used to describe the route - "old".
I was on the McKenzie Highway and Scott had recommended the "Old" McKenzie Highway. About a mile up the road I found the Ranger's Station which straightened me out. In just two miles I would find highway 242 on the right - the Old McKenzie Highway that would wind and climb up and over McKenzie Pass on a nice road that narrowed as it counted off 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 then 5,000 feet of elevation. Each landmark came complete with uncounted hairpin turns.
I saw Betty's protecting hand on my climb. I wasn't "pushing it" in the turns but was enjoying accelerating on the exits when a car pulled off of a side road as I approached. This slowed my forward progress as I hung back and followed the car through the next several turns. It was two of those turns that offered up the only mid-turn gravel that I would encounter on the 36 or more miles to Sisters and she was making sure I was going slow enough to not have problems. It could have been a coincidence, but I don't think so.
As I approached the top of the pass the terrain suddenly and unexpectedly turned to a lava bed at Belknap Crater.
as well as Mt. Washington and Mt. Jefferson. 
A short distance later I came to the Dee Wright Observatory. A long time Forest Service employee in the area, he was honored by the naming of a unique Observatory built at the summit. A walkway circled around and up into a pile of lava rock shaped like a fortress. The windows in the walls aimed your line of sight at a distant peak that was labeled under the window opening.
The fortress was an ideal spot from which to view two of three Sisters
This was the "high point" of my day
From here I rode down the east face of the pass and into Sisters, where "no room at the inn" moved me from the Best Western, where I spent Day 1 back in April, to the Sisters Inn and Suite across the highway, right next door to Takoda's. Closing the circle as I close the year.
you crossed the PCT again not far from McKenzie Pass. Imagine hiking through miles and miles of lava fields.
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