Map: Day 15 Day: 69.0 km | Trip: 1097 km

Today I left late at 9:15 AM but I had an easy trip, no hills and only 42 miles till Sisters. In the morning I made lots of phone calls and postponed my return flight. The little road out of Prineville to O'Neil had hardly any traffic and followed the Crooked River and the railway line. In the distance I could see Mt. Jefferson. In O'Neil the traffic increases due to a gravel plant and the road goes up a small but very steep hill. Once on the hill the Three Sisters can be seen. These snow crowned mountains are very impressive.

The route through Redmond is quite convoluted but it circumvents all the traffic and the city. I basically saw nothing of this city but a gas station where i refueled. The next 19 miles to Sisters are also easy to ride. I had no wind today to slow me down and I reached Sisters at 2:15 PM.

I camped on the City-Park Campground. It costs $5, the surface is quite hard, no grass and it has no showers but it does have hot water. The bathroom is the dirtiest on this side of the Cascades. Even the vault toilets bathroom on the picnic areas and the USFS campgrounds are cleaner and smell better. One guy here on the campground showed me a beetle that was larger than a lighter. He told me that he found it in the urinal. Yummy.

Sisters is a purely touristic town. It reminds me of Kennebunkport, Main. Lots of shops and gift stores, restaurants and so on, much more than a community of 911 people would ever need. Probably half of Eugene is coming here for short vacations. The prices are also appropriate for a major tourist town.

I did not meet any bicyclist today. Tomorrow I will climb the McKenzie Pass and then I can roll downhill till Eugene. I wrote many postcards this afternoon.