What a nice night. We woke refreshed and ready to climb the rest of our bonus climb. The road down to the Aufderhide (FR19) was kind of interesting, with some views of sharp rock fins and a 2-track type of feel. I’d say it was a win, though someone wanting to save some leg strength on this route would be well advised to skip it and cruise the lower roads.
FR19 is fully paved, but most of the time it feels like a 30 ft wide bike path. Very few cars, even though it is Saturday.
For variety, we rolled onto the Constitution Grove portion of the North Fork trail. It was a fun diversion, but probably 5 times slower than the parallel road. Ez hadn’t had quite the caffeine intake she’d become accustomed to in town, and was…. lets just say… getting a tad grumpy. It was a-OK with me since the trail was so slow (trees down, overgrowth, etc). It just rarely gets used.
We climbed, we descended seemingly endlessly, and then we were at hot spring #6, and easily the biggest and most popular. We paid our $6 to walk up the short path, and were informed it was ‘clothing optional’.Â
Terwilliger Springs is quite the spot. Nice setting, nice and clean water, and not too crazy crowded even on Saturday. There was more nudity than I’ve ever seen in a day, that’s for sure, but it just seemed natural. Male and female, young and old. No one was making a big deal of it. It was refreshing. As Ez has said, it’s nice to know places like this exist out there in the world. We certainly enjoyed the soak and the scene at large.
We took a full 3 hours off the bike, after hiking, soaking, and eating 2nd lunch. Then we rolled around the rest of the reservoir to look for cell signal at the dam. I found a tiny bit in order to make a coding change for a canoe race. Then we pedaled on and climbed a good 3000 feet before calling a little wide spot in the road ‘home’ for the night. There’s a bubbling spring and we have plenty of food, and tons of hot chocolate. Life is good. Especially if it doesn’t rain.
Tomorrow, a hike to a lookout, and what may be a bit of an adventure MTB trail down to the much lauded Mckenzie River Trail.
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