At each branch of our route, we are turning onto smaller and smaller roads. And steeper. But these aren’t the usual blackberries!
Black cap raspberries are appearing along the road, and they are yummy. We climb to 2200 feet at Shellrock Creek, where we are the only campers in the campground. Others before us have built dozens of stone cairns on the smooth-rock flats along the creek, so we search for a sign of a hot springs. No luck. We settle for quiet, peace, towering cedars, firs, spruce, and yew.

One huge cedar has fallen across the stream, and now a host of baby cedars grows up along the natural bridge. There are bushes full of tasty red huckleberries. Many of the tallest trees are tilted. They may eventually fall, but it’s nice to be in a forest old enough to have some tilting trees.

In order to reach the viewpoint at High Rocks, we have 2600 more feet of elevation to gain in the first seven miles of the day. As we climb, the ripeness and flavor of the huckleberries improves. And we are soon in the thick of it: fat dark huckleberries crowd the blushing bushes. There is no reason not to stop and fill ourselves with a midmorning snack!

Our maps are good: we’ve brought the Mount Hood National Forest map, carefully torn out all the appropriate pages from the gazetteer, and printed out “OMHT ride #1: The Timothy Lake Challenge”. Both the gazetteer and the MHNF map agree that we will be reaching our last creek soon, near “Black Wolf Meadow”. Our backpacking water filtration pump comes in handy as we refill three liter-bottles. Now the ripe berries are so plentiful that we are able to pull up alongside a bush and grab handfuls of plump berries while still straddling the bikes.

When we reach the viewpoint, Mount Hood, Rainier, and Jefferson are all there, and we take a long relaxing lunch in the shade. It’s been a big climb, but unhurried, paved, without car or truck traffic, and lined with berry bushes at the height of their season. 2600 feet? We eat 2600 feet for breakfast with huckleberries on it!

Now we are rewarded for all of our climbing: mile after mile of easy rolling road. Here are the berry pickers out in force. I ask how the bounty compares to past years, and they are not complaining.

Here’s a meadow, half-hidden on the north side of the road. We explore.
It’s the grassy lake-bed of Frying Pan Lake, very recently dried out. Today it is carpeted with tiny frogs:
we must walk very carefully to avoid crushing them. Every step raises a hail of tiny leaping color: golden frogs, copper frogs, and the brightest green frogs.

A few miles down the road is Little Crater Lake,  and the little turquoise limestone pool is glowing in the meadow with unexpected brilliance.  Thanks to the perfectly clear skies, and the recently legislated absence of cowpies.

The campground is tempting, but one of the campers turns on a gasoline powered electric generator: an unpardonable offense. We take to the road, in search of perfection.

Our maps promise “Barlow Crossing Campground” at the bridge of road 43 over White River, some eleven miles to the east. But reality diverges from the map, and we are not the only ones searching the area for the elusive campground. The sandy, unpaved Barlow Road takes off both upstream and downstream along the White River, and there are some helpful paper-plate signs on the trees. We find exactly what we’re looking for by following the Barlow Road upstream for a few minutes. It’s a bit of a mystery why the campground is not signed out on the paved road, but we’re glad of it as we occupy a prime spot where the sound of the stream drowns out any noise from truck traffic on the distant Road 48. Our third night in a row with a beautiful campfire in a spot beside the water! We rekindle the fire in the morning, and Janie roasts slices of salami over the flames. Wow! Destined to become a new breakfast staple whenever we have a campfire.

Rather than heading straight for paved road 48, we decide to see how the riding is on this sandy Barlow Road. A sign says: “Road Closed Six Miles Ahead, Failing Bridge”. Now that is irresistible! We know that there is some kind of road for at least six miles, and we know that the bridge has not completely failed yet. Off we go into the wood.

It’s unreal riding. In places the “road” is firm, smooth, and covered with a thick carpet of fir needles. No cars have driven on it in some time. We take a false turn where a four-way trail junction seems to be plainly depicted on the National Forest map. We get over or around four sizable trees which are down across the trail, then find a truly failed bridge. We can see that the road is clearly passable on the other side, so we carefully roll the packed bikes across the precarious and steeply inclined collapsed wooden bridge. But the road becomes smaller, smaller, and then turns into an overgrown rabbit-track into the bushes. We retrace our way back over the bridge and approach a family camped beside the creek. “You’re not the first person to ask that question,” they say, and point us back to the four-way intersection where we went wrong. This time we take the clearly-signed “Road 3530” branch.

We begin a road-game, adding a new adjective with each turn as our description of the trail grows more elaborate: “Riding on the soft, Japanese, bumpy, warm-wind, horse-manure-bestrewn, quiet, uncharted, slightly damp, never-ending, sun-dappled, tree-scented, rocky, beautiful, Oregon Trail.”

In three places it has been recently “repaired” with rip-rap: large size rocks which would make it passable for emergency vehicles, but not for packed road bikes with narrow road tires. But those sections are very short, and we are very pleased that we are able to ride along mile after mile. At Grindstone campsite we meet a couple of mountain bikers who have come down from Devil’s Half Acre at the top of the trail. They tell us that the bridge and road are open to bikes all the way up to Highway 35! So this will not turn out to be a long dead-end day trip, but actually a scenic and peaceful bicycle shortcut from road 43 to Barlow Pass high on Mount Hood.

Now, for the last three days we have been looking forward to a maple bar at the Huckleberry Inn in Government Camp. But I have not been allowed to say “the M-word” out loud. Because we were not sure our route would even take us near Government Camp, or, even worse, there is always the possibility that they will have run out of maple bars. But the stars align: we are pretty much out of food, it’s lunch time, and as the waiter answers Janie, “You’ll be fine, we have plenty of maple bars.”

As we sit and eat our grilled halibut sandwich, fresh huckleberry shake, and the first half of our to-go maple bar, he answers the phone:

“Right now? It’s esnowing.” (He looks at us and makes a very funny face.)(Back to the phone call...) “What conditions are you interested in? There is no smoke here. No, there has been no smoke today. No, I cannot guarantee how long there will be no smoke, because I don’t know whether the wind will change. Come on up! It’s beautiful today. You’ll be fine!” After he hangs up, Janie tells him that it’s his job to keep everybody calm. “You should have told them that you’ve run out of maple bars.”

Still Creek travels in its own canyon from Government Camp to the Zigzag River Canyon. Still Creek Road has twelve and a half miles of unpaved gradual descent, separated from the noise and traffic of highway 26 by the steep forested walls of Tom Dick and Harry Mountain. For Labor Day weekend, many of the secluded tent sites near the Creek have already been occupied. The cedars are huge, and the forest floor is covered with thick moss, ferns, and huckleberry bushes.  We are lucky enough to discover a spot which is closed to motorized access, and roll our bikes down to where Still Creek is joined by the creeks tumbling down from “Devil’s Peak”.

In Oregon, the place-name “Devil’s” was often given to any location revered by the natives for its spiritual power.

We are sleeping beneath the huge cedar beside the Creek. In the morning, I can’t wait to tell Jane about what I heard last night: drumming downriver, singing voices, women’s voices, a melodic, repeating tune like religious chanting. But before I get a chance to tell her, she tells me. Because she heard the same song!

In the morning, as we roll out onto the highway, the smoke finally catches up to us. For a while it’s so thick that we tie handkerchiefs over our faces to serve as smoke filters.  But soon we’re back in the clear, climbing the Marmot Road to the Devil’s Backbone. We meet as many bicycles as cars on this road as we make our way over miles of beautiful rolling farmland. To get up onto the Backbone itself we have to climb 600 feet, we guess past Devil’s Neckbone to Devil’s Collarbone...

Eventually we are zooming down the Devil’s Buttbone toward the Sandy River. Janie flags me down and we stop and watch the frolicking baby alpacas at a farm beside the road. We dip into the chilly waters of the Sandy River at Dodge Park, and pedal up the canyon toward Gresham. We strike the plumpest, most abundant roadside blackberry picking of the trip. The air once again is so sweet that it seems we are riding through hot blackberry syrup.

In Gresham, we pick up the Springwater Corridor Trail. It’s sixteen miles of paved, flat bicycle and pedestrian trail all the way to the Willamette River at Sellwood. But today it’s hot. Portlanders have been moaning about this cool cloudy summer for months, and now that we’ve had a few ninety-degree days everybody is complaining about this hot summer. At Foster Road, we see a sketchy looking guy park his car, walk down the trail a few yards with an empty cloth bag, then dart into the bushes. I recognize where we are: right behind the U-Pull-It auto wrecking yard. In five minutes, he emerges from the bushes and returns to his car with a full load of auto parts. “Hole-in-the-fence” auto parts.

We’re home by five. My front tire has two slow leaks from blackberry thorns, but manages to keep enough air to make it home. This has been the first significant bike ride we’ve done as a door-to-door loop. It gives us a thrilling perspective that we’ve ignored before: campsites, views, rivers, lakes, peaks, wild berry fields, quiet backroads: they are all right here. Now let’s just look at the calendar...