Afternoon/evening sleeping at the John Day Sunset Inn was a real challenge. We went sleep about 5 PM with the plan of getting up at midnight, but I was woken up at both 658 and 759 by incessant barking from a dog in the hotel that sounded like it was right above me. The first time I just covered my head with a pillow and was able to go back to sleep, but the second time I couldn’t and so in my frustration I got up, put my clothes on, and walked to the hotel reception to politely but firmly tell them that I needed them to contact the owner of that dog and get them to make it stop barking NOW. It turns out that the dog was in the room literally directly above us which is why I felt it was right on top of me…it WAS! For some reason it never woke Vanesa up that she can remember; maybe that was because I was in the bed closer to the front door and the dog was sitting right above me at the door barking. Anyway, thankfully I never heard the dog again after that, but it took me quite a while to get back to sleep and when the alarm went off at midnight I was not well rested at all. I had slept way too little and it was way too interrupted. We were pretty slow getting up and getting out, and we didn’t leave until about nearly 2 AM. At the end of the town of John Day, as soon as we got past the city limits, the road turned to gravel. This is Oregon’s way of paving country roads and it’s awful for bikes. They just dump a whole bunch of gravel, smooth it out, and then the construction crew leaves and they just let all the car and truck traffic compress it and scatter it to the sides of the road. Fortunately it wasn’t really loose gravel, it was hard-packed, but still it was a pretty rough surface and even though we had a beautiful downhill ride for miles and miles, the poor quality of the road surface slowed us down. We dropped about 1000 feet in elevation over the first 38 miles when we reached the point where the sunlight was just starting to peek over the horizon in Dayville Oregon. We were about to begin a 24-mile-long climb which, even though it was not particularly steep, was quite long and mostly unshaded, so I wanted to make sure we left with full water bottles if we could. We had enough water to make it to our destination of Mitchell without running out completely, but I wanted to make sure we had enough to be COMFORTABLE along the way since there would be no further services until Mitchell and you never know when a day can be harder or hotter than you expec, or you are out there longer than expected because of an unforeseen bike mechanical or tire problem. So in tiny, little Dayville I walked over to the closed Dayville Mercantile’s front porch to look and see if there was a faucet where I could fill the water bottles. I saw a bunch of water on the ground but no faucet. Then I realized that the water was melted ice that had dropped from a large metal bin right in front of me which had a wide assortment of cokes, Powerades, bottled energy drinks, and bottled teas. It was 4:30 in the morning, still dark with just a tiny bit of dawn light, and the Mercantile was not open….and I decided in that moment that I was going take two of the Powerades for our climb. Since there was no faucet for water bottle filling, I decided to rely on the presumed kindness of humanity and figured that they wouldn’t want us to run out of liquid in the middle of the desert. We sat down at a picnic table at a closed café across the street and made peanut butter and Nutella roll ups with flour tortillas for our second breakfast (leftover pizza, not enough, had been the first) then we pedaled off again, with several beautiful miles through farmland and then the red canyon entrance to the John Day Fossil Beds before the climb started. We crossed Rattlesnake Creek at the entrance to the canyon and then had one of the prettier moments of the whole Trans Am trip riding through this beautiful red canyon, very narrow and next to a pretty river, with absolutely zero traffic and the whole place to ourselves. It was magical!. After a short time, the road turned left and we began to climb. From the very beginning it was steeper than we anticipated and more variable than our map indicated. (Yes, the elevation profiles on our maps are not 100% exact and do not represent every incline and decline, only a general change in elevation.) But, we did not feel prepared for the amount of incline we were facing and it was harder than expected. We pretty quickly realized that we had not taken in enough calories the day before after our 80-mile ride from Baker City to John Day, sharing just one 16-inch pizza and having stopped eating when we were full (to save the pizza for today’s breakfast), then going to bed at 5 PM rather than eating dinner. We started eating our snack foods early into the climb and were both dragging, feeling the need for more calories and liquid intake than we typically do. Another thing that made the ride harder for me was that, even though it was really pretty through the twisty canyons and desert mountains at sunrise, because the road kept turning and the gradient kept changing I never could see a destination that we were trying to reach. There was false summit after false summit. I would come around the corner thinking that I had reached the end of that particular incline, only to then see around the corner and realize I had a lot more hill to go, or, I’d come around the corner and see an unexpected descent so I’d shift to a higher gear and get excited to go downhill but then turn another corner and hit a surprising uphill right after it. It was disconcerting facing such an unpredictable road when I didn’t feel at my best because of the lack of sleep, water, and nutrition intake. We were EXTREMELY thankful for the Dayville Mercantile having left those Powerades outside because those extra calories and liquid really helped us!! At some point we stopped and ate the rest of our pepper jack cheese and nuts because we thought we needed some more fat and protein instead of the carbohydrate-dominant granola bars and crackers that we had been eating earlier, and that and the Powerades did the trick. We put pur heads down, mashed one pedal stroke after the other, and we gutted out the last miles of the 24-mile ascent. When we reached the summit we took a picture of ourselves giving the middle finger to the summit sign. Yes, we’re strong enough to climb any mountain out here, but as any cyclist knows, the comfort in which we do so very strongly depends on the energy we put into our bodies beforehand. We’ll be better prepared next time (the big ascent out of Mitchell!). We bombed down the beautiful 7-mile long, 6% grade descent into the town of Mitchell where we had a reservation at the Oregon Hotel. We were very pleasantly surprised at the at how much we liked both the hotel and town. It’s a rustic, Old Western town with a lot of history and charm. But it’s still a working town so it isn’t super-touristy or busy, and there are many permanently-closed buildings and run-down structures in the tiny town, which clearly indicates that business is not all that good around here. Two restaurants, one general/grocery store, and a couple tourist shops are all that is surviving here. There are also a LOT of “For Sale” signs around and I wonder if these places are for sale because people are trying to capitalize on the high real estate values at the moment, because there just isn’t enough tourist traffic here to make a living, or because the town is getting “discovered” and they don’t like that more tourists are starting to come. Anyway, when we got here into our room we loved it, but it has a west-facing wall and window and it’s really hot this week so we’re concerned about the light and the heat preventing us from getting quality late-afternoon and evening sleep, and then therefore affecting our ability to get enough rest to allow leaving at 100 or 200 in the morning like we’ve been doing lately in this heat. We hemmed and hawed about changing rooms but we ultimately decided that we would give ours a try because we were m both too tired to bother with moving our things to a different room, even though the hotel owner offered to let us do so. It was a hot, 93° afternoon but with fans on and blinds closed, it seemed to keep our room pretty cool. We walked down to the Tiger Town Brewing Company (I wonder where that comes from, since I’m sure there are no tigers here…maybe it’s the school’s mascot name) and I got an Italian sub sandwich with fries and a Coke, and Vanesa got a Beyond Burger and tater tots. We then went to the grocery store to check out the situation and it turns out that they sell everything we need and more! We decided not to buy any groceries because there’s no refrigerator in our room and we didn’t yet know if we were going to take a rest day or not…so we decided to go back to the store later if we decided we were gonna leave in the morning. The hotel, brewpub, and store are all within 100 steps of each other in this town so it’s an easy walk to get whatever you need. Vanesa laid down to watch a Netflix movie on her phone and I watched the Tour de France on my phone, struggling with the poor Wi-Fi connection, We ultimately we decided that neither of us are in any condition to ride tomorrow and we really need a rest day, and this is a cute town to do it in with everything that we need quite accessible. The hotel owners agreed to let us switch rooms tomorrow if we found out that the room we’re staying in tonight doesn’t allow us to sleep well in the afternoon and evening hours…how super kind of them! Vanesa ended up crashing about 5 PM and I followed suit at about six. REST DAY: The next thing I knew, it was 3:45 AM and Vanesa was waking me up. I had slept like a baby, no problem at all. Yes, I was absolutely dead tired, but also I think that’s telling me that the room itself is just fine and we will not be needing to change rooms today. Vanesa echoed that sentiment this morning; she woke up and said that she slept great. We have a lot of time to kill today and there’s not much going on in this town at all. Our day will involve eating, resting, watching something on our phones, and repeating that pattern. Vanesa took some pretty pictures in the pre-dawn light when she was walking Maui, and then this morning we walked a little farther at 6:45 AM to a cafe 4/10 of a mile away out on the highway, but even though Google says it opens at 7:00, the sign out front said it opens at nine so we’ll be headed back then for hopefully a HUGE breakfast. It was a good breakfast at Bridge Creek Cafe…it took forever to get the food (1hr, 10min) but it was good. V said it was the best veggie omelette of the Trans Am thus far. It was weird though, being in a brick and mortar restaurant and drinking coffee out of paper cups, eating off paper plates and using plastic utensils. My guess is that it’s such a small place that cooking takes the bulk of their time and they don’t have the staff or time to clean. We spent the rest of the morning and early to mid-afternoon lazily lazing around watching the Tour de France (me) and Netflix (V). We needed to force in more calories before going to sleep at 5 pm because we didn’t want another sluggish morning climb because we went to sleep instead of eating so we went back again to the brewery. We’d really enjoyed our meal amd our time there yesterday, but the vibe this time was negative because there were a bunch of edgy biker dudes from a motorcycle gang eating there (talking shot, talking loudly, almost daring people to confront them it seemed) and one made a snide comment about fake service dogs when we walked in and sat down, so we immediately didn’t feel very comfortable. Also, combined with the fact that it was hot inside the restaurant; pretty busy; and we had a nice, cool, and private room at the hotel a half-block away; we ordered our food to go and got up and left to go grocery shopping next door while they cooked it. V asked this time that they cook the Beyond Burger more thoroughly, as it was a bit too raw yesterday; the server said she’d take care of it. When we got our groceries, and I walked back and got the food, we went upstairs to sit down to our nice, private meal when Vanesa discovered her Beyond Burger was even less cooked than it was the day before. We were literally eating right before going to bed and couldn’t be bothered to go back to the place we’d wanted to leave anyway, so she choked it down for the calories alone and didn’t enjoy it at all. I liked my sandwich and we both liked our fries, and having made our bellies full with lots of calories, we went to sleep. Or, should I say, we went to bed. This night, it was hotter and brighter in our room it seemed than it had been last night…but really, we probably just weren’t as tired on our rest day and therefore trying to sleep in bright daylight was a real challenge. Bottom line, we both slept poorly and when the alarm went off at midnight, getting up was a real challenge.