Flinn's Cycle Oregon Blog: Day 3: Burns to Diamond (63 miles)

After the usual morning ritual - a freezing sprint to the bathroom, followed by breakfast - I experienced the joy of packing all my wet camping gear (thanks to the morning dew) into my duffle bag, dropping it off at the transport truck, and hopped on my bike for the day's ride to the town of Diamond. We headed out of Burns to Highway 205, and rode south through the flat pastureland towards Malheur Lake. We had a short climb up and over a lava tube (as Ken Chichester, our Route Master and resident geologist, had explained the previous evening) before heading towards The Narrows and then on to visitors' center at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge for our lunch break. After lunch, we continued down Highway 205 through the Blitzen Valley (really, that's its name - and no, it's not named after a reindeer) and headed to our camp in Diamond - or actually, six miles outside the town of Diamond - which has a population of five people, so I'm not really sure it qualifies as a town. It was explained to us by a resident that the town used to have eight people, but a family moved away last year (their annual census must be a breeze to complete!). Our campsite was a cow pasture - complete with real live cow patties for the sake of authenticity - so I had to do a little site clearing before putting down my tent. After my usual post-ride ritual - grabbing a slice of pizza from Pizzicato Pizza (official pizza provider for Cycle Oregon) - me and the rest of my C.O. compatriots spent the rest of the afternoon searching for shade, as the temperature climbed to 85 degrees and our cow-pasture home was devoid of any trees (we discovered that semi-trailers are a wonderful source of shade). After dinner and the evening's entertainment, we enjoyed some wonderful stargazing courtesy of OMSI, thanks to our remote location and the lack of light pollution.