Today's ride was entirely different than all of the others.
The first thing is that the ride was mostly through rich farmland. The second thing was that it was nearly flat!
Upon leaving Junction City early this morning, it was quite cold. The temperature was only around 47 degrees at the start of the ride and it was quite overcast. It appeared that rain might be imminent, but it never materialized. In fact, after 1 P.M., temperatures were in the low 70's with crystal clear skies.
Our ride followed along the path of the Willamette River Cycling Path for the most part. In doing so, we passed thousands of acres of orchard grass (a cousin to wheat) that is mostly used for cattle feed; fields of blueberries, acres of herbs, and many thousands of acres of nut bearing trees with the largest percentage being filberts.
One other crop of note is grapes. While small, Oregon has many wineries. Gail, Ken and I stopped for a little wine tasting today at a very small winery called Ankeny Vinyards. They grow 7 different kinds of grapes and mostly sell their grapes and wines to other wineries. However, we sampled six of their private label wines and enjoyed a number of them. We enjoyed meeting two "winery dogs" on the premises and had fun rubbing some appreciative bellies.
We went through a number of many small towns including Albany, known for their Victorian architecture.
As we weaved across the landscape today, we even had a chance to take a small ferry ride across a part of a tributary to the Willamette River.
We saw many raptors again today and evidence of their massive nests are everywhere. It's not uncommon for the utilty companies to put a piece of plywood about 4X4' on the top of a number of poles in the region. Apparently the eagles will build a nest that is constructed of large tree branches, twigs, and so on, that sometimes may take the birds many years to construct. People in the know say that the birds return to the same nests each year to raise their young.
Stats for the day: 71 miles, about 1500 feet of climb.
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