Day 9: Troutdale OR - Klamath Falls OR

A promising start to the day as I wandered out front to spark up the first tab of the day and saw something curious above my head-branez, viz. BLUE SKY!!1!  To make things even betterer, my phone has stopped playing silly buggers.  Properly, I mean.  In Clarkston it claimed to have established talks with T-mobile, and repeated the same claim last night, but when actually called upon to make a phone call, it shrugged its shoulders and claimed there was, in fact, no network.  I'm not quite susre whether this is an example of a Schrödingnetwork, which is simultaneously both there and not there, or a Heisenetwork, about which you cannot be sure, or something else, about which I ought to consult floppy-haired cleverness dispenser Professor B Cox.  But I was able to ring the Super 8 in Battle Mountain and confirm my reservation.  Which is a Good Thing, as a computer "upgrade" ate all the reservations.  Also the bloke on the reception desk looked like a 2/3 scale model of Brian Blessed.

The first inkling that things might not be going according to plan was the violent evasive manoeuvre required to avoid the suddenly-slowing pickup in front of me, who was dodging the debris left behind by another pickup having struck, in no particular order:

• A roadside marker post
• A mailbox
• A good-sized deer

Lack of movement on the part of Bambi suggested that being hit with a Ford F-150 is unlikely to do you much good.

Anyway, a route had been plotted to take advantage of the roads through the luvverly wooded Cascades, as the not-far-from-the-coast mountains are known in these parts.  Up the valley of the Clackamas River zoom zoom:

But soft!  What do these orange-and-white marker barrels signify?  The answer was found round the corner.  Road closed because big burny fiery DETH.  So, that'll be fifty miles back to the first usable alternative.  Over this again:

Those are the only two photos I took today.  Soz.

A suitably Chestertonian detour eventually got me onto US-20, which is a Fun Thing and took me out of the flatlands and back into the hills.  Then OR-126 to pick up the Aufderheide Scenic Wossname, which wends through the woods for sixty-five miles and avoiding a big chunk of US-97, which is a road I cordially detest.

On the way down the 126 it became very very windy.  And dark.  And when I took off my sunglasses it was still dark.  Tactical roof-erecting stop performed just in time before running into a storm which matched in intensity, if not duration, the one from outside Oklahoma City last year.  And this one had lightning and hail thrown in for good measure.  In the middle of all this I found the turn-off for the Aufderheide Scenic Wossname.

"Road closed because big burny fiery DETH".  Arse.  Turn around, retrace to US-20 and head east to Bend, there to get onto US-97 anyway.  Catching up with the storm again.  Which then caught me again when the road changed direction.  Finally reached Klamath Falls after a whisker under 500 miles, which is about 130 more than scheduled and I am tired and need tea.  Hopefully the mountains further south will not be full of big burny fiery DETH, coz I'm getting fed up with it now.