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Today we left Vale (surviving our night in Bates Motel), and rode in perfect weather through Oregon’s eastern farmland and foothills.  The sky was cloudless, winds light, and temperatures warm.   (The forecast is for temperatures close to 100 in the next couple of days.)  Farms around here (and all of Wyoming, Idaho, and now Oregon) require irrigation.  There is an extensive system of ditches and irrigation equipment wherever you go.

At our first stop, there was a sign up board where you filled out a card to get water access.

We talked with this farmer, who told us some of the background on farming in the region.  Farms are large (thousands of acres), which they need to be to survive.

He was remarkably unsentimental about it, identifying his crop as a commodity that had to compete on a global market.

I loved this tiny post office attached to a still older, unused wooden building.

This area abounds in beautiful weathered wooden buildings.

Conditions are very dry, and there are frequently signs of farms and ranches that have been abandoned over the years.  The region is only recently populated (last 100 years), so these places may have been active only a few decades earlier.

A lot of the scenery today was like this.  Huge fields, with dry mountains in the distance.

We did do some climbing, reaching a moderate pass. They must get a lot of snow, judging from the gauge and the warning to put on tire chains before ascending.

I entered my final time zone (Pacific) as we left Malheur County. At this point, I have ridden over 3000 miles.

Love that name: Misfortune County.  There are many uses of this French word in place names of the region, including a national Forest.

We finished the day in Unity at the Burnt River Motel, Store, and Restaurant.  We were the only occupants judging from the lack of cars in the morning.  Or maybe it was completely full of cross country cyclists, who — like us — bring their bikes into their rooms.