I’ve been around the Wallowa mountains on a bike

And I lived to tell about it!

Daniel and I spent last week on the very beautiful Wallowa Mountain Rambler cycling tour. Whew! With the tandem and about 100 pounds of gear, it was quite a workout getting up some of those hills!

Despite the work, I didn’t lose any weight (and didn’t expect to) because of the killer food available at every meal. Our guides, Celia and Andrew, did an amazing job of cooking up fabulous fare and I wasn’t about to turn it down. If you ever want to tour in the Northwest, I highly recommend Wild Heart Cycling.

Several of us were very interested in seeing elevation profiles for the route, and when we got home, I found a very cool site that makes it pretty easy: MapMyRide.com. It’s part of a larger network of fitness sites and offers some clever features, mostly based on Google Maps and Google Earth. They really did a great job of putting it together.

Here are the routes for our trip: day 1 · day 2 · day 3 · (day 4 was a rest day) · day 5 · day 6 · day 7

As you can see, the elevation profile isn’t all that bad, but remember the gear! I was glad to be on the tandem where I could take advantage of Daniel’s enthusiasm for hills. I’m considering getting a touring bike of my own for future tours but we’ll see. I’d have to get a lot stronger (or pack all the heavy stuff in Daniel’s trailer…).

We also took a whole lotta pictures of the tour which you can browse if you’re interested.

Next up: resume the dieting and get back under 140 pounds…

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