Day 73 - August 15, 2013 - Baker City, OR Rest Day

After 6 days back in the saddle, and before a tough 70 mile day with three mountain passes to climb, we determined that a rest day was in order.  Sleeping in, even until 8:30, was a great luxury!

We had a leisurely breakfast at the cafe attached to the hotel, vegged out to the History Channel, then got ready to hit the Baker Heritage Museum.  We briefly contemplated unloading our bikes to get there, but chose to walk instead.  It was a hot one again - surprise, surprise. 

The museum was neat, very well done, especially for a local museum, and they have an impressive rock collection, donated by a couple of sisters who devoted their lives to collecting them.  The museum is housed in what used to be a natatorium before World War 2, when the pool was filled in and the building converted to a factory creating vehicle trailers for the war effort.  Most of the folks on the museum board happened to show up, and we had a good chat with a few of them about our trip.  Nice people.  I bought a diary of a young man who traveled on the Oregon Trail to read in the gift shop...I've been missing a good book, and the entries are short so I might have time to actually read it in the coming week or so.

We decided to hit up historic downtown Baker City afterwards, and enjoyed the walk past the pretty city park, with the Powder River running alongside it.  The city has a nice feel to it.  We found a Chinese restaurant for lunch, and followed that up with a stop in at a cute ice cream parlor.

After a toasty walk back to the hotel, we lounged a bit more, I took a dip in the hot tub, and we started to settle in for an early night, in preparation for getting up early to tackle those mountain passes.

Of course, what we can only imagine are a herd of elephants has checked into the room upstairs, and they wanted to see just how squeaky every square inch of floor is.  Then a large and loud family arrives in the parking lot just outside our window, chats for an hour, and is, naturally, staying just steps away from our room.  They continued to have a loud, seemingly hilarious conversation in the hallway before retiring to their respective rooms, ensuring that they slammed their doors no fewer than 5 times each.

So it's nearly 2am Pacific time, I need to be up in about 4.5 hours, but sleep eludes me.  I'm not so sure those passes will be tackled tomorrow after all...

Here is the only other photo I took today - a creative bike rack downtown, if you can make it out.