Day 22! Home!

The last Friday of our trip dawned with mild temperatures and some wind. We were excited about the last day, but still had over 60 miles to do, so we got up, got dressed (in not all of our layers) and were off.

Here we are all ready to go from camp (blurry pictures curtsy of my parents' camera again, but we still like them):


We made plans with my parents to meet in Government Camp for a last breakfast together before they would just take off for home.

It was about 7 miles, mostly climbing, to breakfast. We saw Mt Hood again (although you can't really see it here, it's what Anthony was trying to get a picture of):


and passed Snow Bunny:

on this beautiful morning.

We had our usual oatmeal for breakfast, eating inside the van mostly due to the fact we were parked in a parking lot. Because we were out of dried apples or freeze dried apples or freeze dried strawberries (all of Davan's usual oatmeal additives), she had a bowl of pb&j oatmeal (well, really almond butter and fruit spread) that she was really excited about:

During breakfast, my step dad, Dennis, put on our favorite local radio station - I guess we were really getting home! - and we found out that the temps in the Portland metro area were predicted to be in the 90s!!! What a change from what we'd been in the last several days.

Anthony talked to Dennis about being home in time for lunch. I though, "Why? We don't want to rush the last day. We want to stop for lunch and take it easy!" and I said as much. Anthony just sort of looked at me, but didn't reply much.

We said our goodbyes:

and absolutely flew home.

All that climbing we'd been doing for a few days without a lot of down? Yeah. Well, this was reward day. Anthony, of course, knew it much better than I and, thus, he's prediction of home for lunch. We were home around noon.

Now, it wasn't all completely and totally down hill, but from Government Camp to about 9 miles out of Sandy was, which made for around 20 miles of pure downhill pleasure. We had a tail wind, too.

The tail wind stayed with us even when the downhill didn't and speed us along toward home. We came in via Boring (a town near here) and the Springwater Corridor (where we often ride), stopping once in Sandy for the bathroom and a Cliff Bar each and once just on the Springwater Corridor (5 miles from home) for the last of the Barbara's Fig Bars.

By 1:30 we'd unpacked, started laundry, done dishes and pretty much put everything away. I guess that's what what you get for traveling light. We each showered in turn, much to each person's pleasure, and then had the last of our Cliff Bars in celebration. We'd saved our favorite for that purpose - Mint Chocolate.

It was a great trip and we had to much to talk about as we went to pick up our mail and go out for a celebratory dinner at our favorite restaurant - The Paradox Cafe. And, I'll tell you what, while I was still feeling ambivalent about being home and about getting in the van to drive to dinner, getting into my comfortable bed at the end of the day sure felt nice.

Keep tuned for a summation post to come in the next few days. Thanks for reading about our trip. It's been really fun to revisit it for the blog!