Ochoco Pass and Mitchell OR

We are camped out right now in the funkiest little town called Mitchell OR, a real old west with absolutely no pretense whatsoever, just the funnest place. The town lets bikers camp in the town park for 3 days and has water, fire pits, bathrooms and playground stuff for kiddos, and right now there is only us and Tom, a young guy from out east pedaling to Virginia from Florence OR.   We camped last night in the Ochoco Wilderness off the road a little bit, we got in around 7 and started setting up camp, we had dinner, rice with veggies, falafel and hummus and while I'm cooking I remember seeing all kinds of posters warning us about bears in the Ochoco, so I am getting a little paranoid about the smells we're creating here, I am trying to keep all food smelling type stuff off the ground and after dinner buttoned up super tight.  We went to bed after we sat around the fire for awhile telling bear stories and I had the most realistic dream that a bear was trying to get in the tent and I kept pushing it's fat head through the tent and growling at it, just totally annoyed that it would just keep pushing back. It was so real that when I woke up in the morning I asked Ryan if he had heard all the racket of me fighting with the bear, "no, I missed that" he says dryly, "How in the world could you miss that, I was rocking the whole tent!" I snap at him, "You were dreaming Jelena " he tells me matter of factly. I seriously had to ponder this, maybe I really was dreaming, maybe not. I had to investigate this one, I got up and looked around for footprints ,nothing, food left on the trailer is untouched. It all seemed so real. We finished leftovers from the night before and start heading out when we're met by an older hippy couple on a  co-motion tandem fully loaded, they tell us they are heading to Maine, Bay Harbor to be exact.  These guys are firing off questions left and right about us and our set up and just thrilled to the max, Abby boasts to me that she saw them first and they were gnawing on a two-pound block of cheese with their teeth, I love them instantly, I offered them the use of my pocket knife and they refused and kept ripping off massive hunks with their chompers, their names they tell us are John and Shanna and hale from Salem, OR, we had a blast asking them questions and them asking us questions, and John the whole time he's standing there talking to us is just gawking like he had just discovered a village of leprechauns or something. After a long visit we part ways, I am sad to see them go but they are getting 60-70 mile days in and I doubt we'll be seeing them again and we are averaging about 30-35 right now.     The Ochoco is gorgeous, every bit of it, giant ponderosa pines, the children call them puzzle pines because their bark looks just like puzzle pieces, high meadows with little butterflies floating around and happy little yellow flowers, we are climbing all day and finally get to the top and come to sign that says. Downhill next 7 miles, I mean this is some serious downhill, probably a 12% grade and we are just soaring, Ryan and Obby tucked themselves up and bulleted past us at 40-45 and I had every intention of catching up but something went flying off my bike and Abby tells me it's my stevia that I had in my front pack, I didn't reckon I'd find any of that anytime soon and had to stop and grab it, I guess I had left my front handle bar bag open, I probably would have lost it all as fast as we were going.  We got rolling again and we are cruising in no time flat, I could not even begin to describe how beautiful this place was, just one shocking scene after another, valleys with ancient sea bed rock formations rimming the whole thing and giant grassy plains way down below with mountains busting out the ground violently and covered with amazing trees and foliage.  I about made me cry, but I couldn't because I'm flying so fast I would surely going sailing over the edge of this cliff right next to us if I teared up.  I am holding the handle bars so tight, scanning the road ahead like a hawk for any bumps or gravel patches, with wind flapping my cheeks around like laundry on the line, Abby is trying to talk to me but all her noise is falling behind her, I glanced her face in the mirror and she is all smiles from ear to ear, she lives for this kind of stuff, little junkie.  When we get to bottom I asked her what she had said and she told me she was yelling for me to pedal like she was.   We reach flat land and pedaling seems so hard now after that and it is significantly hotter for sure, I had to shed the jacket and hat I was wearing and that still wasn't enough,  we were now entering Mitchell, we were all talking excitedly for days about the captive bear they kept there at the local gas station, it was supposedly so tame, you could wrestle with it and we really couldn;t wait to meet him, we stopped first though at a coffee shop heralding famous maple bars and the kids asked how far it was to the bear, the lady at the coffee place tells us that they just moved the bear to a ranch outside of town because he was getting too big, we were bummed but when we rode on into town it all seemed to get better, this place is so cool.  Old West mining town that is stuck in time, I mean, Sisters was cute in that Disneyland sort of way, McDonalds with a western storefront scene, but this here is the real thang. We roll into the park and there is John and Shanna eating their lunch with Tom, we have a happy little reunion but after a bit they gotta go, they are serious about miles. I don't understand how it was so hard to part ways with people you just met this morning but I am struggling. Tom is staying behind and we get to chat with him a while and soon Ryan takes the kids off exploring the town, they come back hours later telling me excitedly about all the scorpions they caught, and then they take off again and it's been hours more, it's going on 9:30 and no sign, where could they be, this town is only a couple hundred yards long with just a couple hundred people.  I better go find em, they might be in a pinch with a rattler, I'll have to go use my mad bear fighting skills to free em of their predicament.