June 29 Day 10

Day 10 Baker City Oregon to Oxbow Oregon :  70.5 miles

Left baker city at first light and rolled past sales lot of old wagon train and old farm equipment.  Cool stuff and wished I had time to stop and check it all out.  We make our way up a nice warm up hill called Flagstaff Hill to views of the Baker Valley that was quit beautiful.  Then we started our descent into the Hell's Canyon and along the Powder River.  Stunning and quit varied terrain.  Soon we were in the town of Richland where we filled up on food and water.  Locals were giving us warning of the heat in Hells Canyon.  We said thanks for the info and rode on.  With some work and some steep terrain we topped out at another pass and rapidly dropped into the valley and the road to the town of Halfway.  Beautiful views of peaks to the north and green all around.  Again we wished we had time to go into Halfway but the it was really starting to heat up and we needed to at least get to Oxbow.  The final miles of the day were in about 100 degrees and we came across a store in time.  Pulled over and rushed to the shade of the store and gulped orange juice as fast as we could.  Soon T and L arrived and cooled us off some more with cold water.  We wanted to go farther that day but it simply was too hot.  So we camped at the Copperfield campground that was awesome.  Ran through the sprinklers, went to the river and sat in the shade to pass the day.  Colleen woke in the middle of the night to sprinklers filling the tent with water.  What a surprise for her but with the water came a welcomed coolness to the air.