Viva La Vagabond: The Luck of the... Mexican & Two Caucasians

Long time no..post! We have been without service for a day or two so we got set a little behind. Do I even need to say that in those couple of days for some unknown reason our luck, or whatever it is that is happening to us, has continued. It is almost like we are living a story. Like clockwork, exciting parts of the plot unfold to keep our audiences attention..at least we hope it is! We sure are staying entertained. So from Sisters we took our time getting to Prineville. The ride in was mostly uneventful. The scenery started to change drastically from lush, forest to brown, rocky hills and less greenery. We ended up camping in Prineville that night in the next night as well, in order to give our knees a little more rest after our big climb up Mckenzie Pass. It was nice to spend a day taking it easy in the warm sunny weather after that full week of rain. Staying an extra day also allowed us to meet up with Miranda and Robbie, two siblings from Winchester, TN who are also doing the TransAm this summer...only MUCH faster than we are. They camped with us and we spent the night grilling food and sharing stories about our experiences so far. Okay and maybe eating a gallon of Tillamook ice cream too. Tuesday we were refreshed and back at it again. We summited the OcHoco Pass and made our way to Mithell. Never heard of it? Well that is probably because it is smaller than most streets in Murfreesboro. Tuesday was our first significantly "off" day. By this point, we are basically in the desert, we went from constant rain to 85 degrees with not a cloud in the sky, and we are now traveling long distances between what hardly qualities as towns. We rolled into Mitchell in the late afternoon exhausted dreading setting up camp in the still blazing sun when we ran into a familiar face. A man named Mike passed us early in the day going over the pass. He said he was riding from Florence, Oregon to his home, Salt Lake City and his wife Mary was driving his support vehicle. Long story short, after chit chatting for a minute, the two end up treating us to dinner and getting us a place to stay in The Oregon Hotel. We are being so well taken care of out here that it is like we never even left home..Or maybe even being more taken care of than at home. We could write a whole post on Mary and Mike but basically these guys are two of the nicest, hard core and loving people we have met. This was so unexpected coming into a ghost town that we initially thought had possibly shut down after the maps were last updated. And they weren't even the only people we met in this place. Miranda and Robbie told us of another TransAm tourist they met named Park. Park is from South Korea and has come to America for the very first time to do this tour while making a documentary and a book of dreams from all of the people that he meets. Oh and he is doing the whole thing in flip flops! When we saw him walking around looking rather out of place in this ghost town we knew it had to be him. Talk about scary, go ride your bike across a foreign country that you know no one in and while in a sketchy village, a group of people yell your name from across the street. He did eventually warm up to us. Park is one interesting and fearless guy. We hope to meet up with him some more along the way. And then finally we get to today. This morning we saw off all of our new friends and went on our way to Mt. Vernon. 60 miles in more intense sun made for another tough day but we made it to the Bike Inn. This is essentially a lady's detached part of her house that she opens up to bikers for only donations. We are the only ones here for the night and the best part....it is stocked with Disney movies! Oh and they also have goats. But anyway, we have rambled enough. Sorry for the long post but we hope you do enjoy hearing our many stories of all of the fortunate things that are happening to us. We hope to get some good mileage in the next couple of days to make it to Idaho and bag our first state before next week. Until next time!

We in the Wild West y'all.