I rode East through Oregon.
From the rolling hills with green fields and sheep, into the steep valleys and big Douglass Fir forests of the Cascade mountains, and then up onto the arid plateau of Eastern Oregon which is in fact a real desert... It gets dry fast and the forest changes from Doug Fir to Oregon Pine and then to open Juniper woodland and finally to sagebrush....
The "Bad Lands" as the first Europeans who came from the East on wagons called it. And then I had a bit of a hiccup in the riding when I managed to run completely out of fuel!
I try to get 400Km out of each full tank and I watch carefully where the towns are and how far to the next one. But today, at a junction where I was expecting fuel, I got there and the gas station had been closed and boarded up for several years...
It was 40 miles to the next town, and I only made it 20! (That was however 460Km on the tank). No real problem though, I rolled to a stop at a small side road, locked the bike up and started hitching...
I only had to wait ten minutes before someone gave me a ride to the next town. There, I got about 3litres of gas in an old oil container and set about hitching back to my bike. Again, I only waited another ten minutes by the road and got a ride back. No Problem :)))
Then I was on my way on the bike again.
Then I camped behind someones hay bales in a pull-out for the night...
And there was another slight hiccup with that too!
I was roused the next morning by a half dozen "cowboys" who wanted to run a few hundred head of cattle through the spot where I had camped...
So, I packed up very quickly and got out of their way. It was then 7am and I rode off to get breakfast at the next town and see if I could find a public library to post some blog entries.
It seems you can still hitch hike safely and effectively in at least some parts of America :)))
