2023-06-14 Biking in Maupin - Day - 1

The forecast was for very windy again today, so Louise and I decide to go for a bike ride.  It is her last day here, and I don't think she would have appreciated sitting on a beach in the wind while I beat myself up on the water....

Louise had found an article about a classic bike ride in Maupin, Oregon, which is about an hour drive.

We left at around 9:00 and arrived just after 10.  Maupin is a beautiful little community about 40 minutes south of the Dalles.  It caters to several rafting companies.

We parked at a the Maupin City Park and after making a couple of phone calls to figure out how to register and pay for parking, we got the bikes organized and headed off.  I had loaded the route on Ride GPS which worked really well.

The ride started out with a huge climb (1600 feet).  Fortunately, we had our E-Bikes.  The rest of the ride was flat with a few hills, and a couple of real downhill runs.  The countryside was very open with large hills and lots of irrigated land and grazing land.

At one point, the route took us onto a road that was having a chip seal installed, so for about 1/3 of the route there were lots of gravel chips on the surface of the road.  That made one of the big downhill's interesting.  We both also started having trouble with our E-Bikes.  Possibly due to the rough road, and maybe some dirty battery connections, we kept getting error messages and our power would shut down.  Mine wouldn't run for more than about a minute without an error, so I basically just turned it off.  I will check with a bike mechanic as to what we can do.

The best part of the ride was towards the end, where we first saw a waterfall, and then some traditional salmon fishing areas with the piers running out over the river, and some really intense rapids.  It was really spectacular.

The final 10km was on an old rail bed which had been converted to an access road for the campgrounds along the river.  We saw lots of fishermen, and quite a few rafts floating down the river - presumably exiting the river before the big rapids.

Overall, our ride was 57km.  A good ride.  It was almost 3:00 when we finished, so we were both hungry.  We stopped at the Rainbow Tavern in Maupin for lunch, and split a Ruben Sandwich, which was really excellent.

We then stopped at the Holy Roasters Coffee Shop, just out of Maupin, so Louise could have her daily Latte, before heading back to Hood River.

Ross was out kiting, and said it was one of the windiest days he had ever kited.  He was on a 4m Kite and his directional board, and even then was over powered.

Ross arrived home shortly after we did.  Louise set out some crackers, cheese and her home made chutney for a snack.

Then Handre arrived!

We then heard from Kent who had stopped to try to foil at Roosevelt, but had been blown off the water.  More about him later.

We ordered Pizza for supper.  Kent got to the house about the time we got our Pizza.  He told us about Roosevelt, and how he could not sheet in his 3.8.