Baker City, Oregon to Halfway, Oregon -- 54 miles

We had planned to get up at 5:00 am, but slept later and were woken by Bob Berkowitz’s phone call at 6:00 am. Had slow service but good food at the Baker Truck Corral for breakfast. Lenny talked to Debbie Epperson, the motel clerk, when we checked out, about vertebral subluxation and our website. She wanted to share that information with her cousin, who is having various health problems. Biked out of town at 8:10 am and stopped at the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center. After hearing and seeing the hardships they experienced, we had great empathy for the early pioneers on the Trail!

In these modern times, it seems that bike touring is about as close as you can get to what the pioneers did 150 years ago. There is also a real camaraderie between bike tourists - the difficulty of life on the road creates a kinship and a genuine willingness to help one another out. The terrain was downhill until we reached the town of Richland. From there, we climbed for 7 miles up a 7% grade in the sweltering heat of the day. Fortunately, the downhill was equally steep! We camped in Halfway and saw a sign from Half.com about this being “the first dot-com town.” Remember hearing in the news a while ago about the town changing their name. Had a campstove dinner of lentil stew.