Oregon Blue Mountains in Six Easy Pieces. That is what our friend and fellow randonneur John Kramer named his combination of six 200 kilometer routes. These six “day rides” link together to form a 1200 kilometer loop from Hood River (or Bingen, just across the river where John actually lives), through such charming villages as, Heppner, Elgin, Halfway, John Day, and Condon, ending up back in Hood River/Bingen… The scenery was varied and beautiful but the choices of hotels and restaurants at day’s end were…interesting. Heppner had only one hotel choice and when I tried to make reservations a couple of months ahead, they were booked! How could a $50 per night hotel in the middle of nowhere be full? I guess there was a wedding. Hey, some people get married in the Bahamas and some go to Heppner…. Rick and I decided this might be our chance to try out the sleeping arrangements in our new vehicle, but John had managed to get them to promise him some sort of room. This turned out to be the overflow option of an apartment in the building behind the motel so there 
was plenty of room for all of us. I got there first (I had the car, after all) and thus was able to make friends while I waited for the boys (trust me, not much else to do in Heppner.)
Vi, the octogenarian from the apartment downstairs greeted me cheerily in spite of a fairly fresh black eye (“You’ll be glad to hear the sidewalk is just fine,” she said.) She knew I wasn’t from those parts, because of course she knew everyone in that town (and there aren’t any other towns nearby) so she told me the best place to eat in town was the grill at the bowling alley. “Their western burgers are out of this world!” and so began our gastronomic adventure in Northeast Oregon. Every night a new $50 motel, and an amazingly similar menu in yet another hole-in-the-wall establishment. Most nights, the boys would roll into town about fifteen minutes before “the Shamrock” or “The Waffle Iron Café” closed down the grill so I usually had two sweaty dates in salty lycra for my chicken basket dinner. What more could a girl want?
In Condon (yes, that’s the real name of the town and it is spelled correctly), the local café was out of meatballs for the spaghetti Rick wanted. When they told him he’d have to have it with just tomato sauce, he said, “what? How about a hamburger? Can I have that?” Well sure… “OK, so you take the burger from the hamburger, you crumble it up and cook it up in a pan and throw on the tomato sauce and put it all on the spaghetti and charge me whatever you want, OK?” Hey, yeah, we can do that! The result was the biggest plate of spaghetti and meat sauce any of us had ever seen and which not even a hungry randonneur could put away.
Here’s one my Aunt Ollie and other salad lovers will appreciate. By about the third night I was really getting sick of chicken baskets and I asked the cute young waitress what I might like on their menu. She assured me their salads were very good. Really, I thought. OK. How about the Chinese chicken salad? Her favorite, she said. What kind of dressing did I want on that? (?) I hesitated a beat and then said, how about the Chinese salad dressing? You know, the vinaigrette-type… “Hey, Fran! Do we have any—what did you say? Vinegar…what? Dressing?” Well, not really it turned out…but they had Italian and that sounded closer than thousand island or Ranch…!
In Halfway, they roll up the sidewalks early, about 8:00 pm, so I hit the store and bought stuff for sandwiches, some cup-o-noodle soups and topped it off with Haagen Daaz Ice Cream bars. But John Day, now that’s a two horse town! There’s a real restaurant there, with booths made of something besides cracked naugahyde! I scoped out the Outpost Pub & Grill and decided I was going to be sitting there ordering a real meal before they closed, with or without my sweaty, lycra-clad boys!
was plenty of room for all of us. I got there first (I had the car, after all) and thus was able to make friends while I waited for the boys (trust me, not much else to do in Heppner.)Vi, the octogenarian from the apartment downstairs greeted me cheerily in spite of a fairly fresh black eye (“You’ll be glad to hear the sidewalk is just fine,” she said.) She knew I wasn’t from those parts, because of course she knew everyone in that town (and there aren’t any other towns nearby) so she told me the best place to eat in town was the grill at the bowling alley. “Their western burgers are out of this world!” and so began our gastronomic adventure in Northeast Oregon. Every night a new $50 motel, and an amazingly similar menu in yet another hole-in-the-wall establishment. Most nights, the boys would roll into town about fifteen minutes before “the Shamrock” or “The Waffle Iron Café” closed down the grill so I usually had two sweaty dates in salty lycra for my chicken basket dinner. What more could a girl want?
In Condon (yes, that’s the real name of the town and it is spelled correctly), the local café was out of meatballs for the spaghetti Rick wanted. When they told him he’d have to have it with just tomato sauce, he said, “what? How about a hamburger? Can I have that?” Well sure… “OK, so you take the burger from the hamburger, you crumble it up and cook it up in a pan and throw on the tomato sauce and put it all on the spaghetti and charge me whatever you want, OK?” Hey, yeah, we can do that! The result was the biggest plate of spaghetti and meat sauce any of us had ever seen and which not even a hungry randonneur could put away.Here’s one my Aunt Ollie and other salad lovers will appreciate. By about the third night I was really getting sick of chicken baskets and I asked the cute young waitress what I might like on their menu. She assured me their salads were very good. Really, I thought. OK. How about the Chinese chicken salad? Her favorite, she said. What kind of dressing did I want on that? (?) I hesitated a beat and then said, how about the Chinese salad dressing? You know, the vinaigrette-type… “Hey, Fran! Do we have any—what did you say? Vinegar…what? Dressing?” Well, not really it turned out…but they had Italian and that sounded closer than thousand island or Ranch…!
In Halfway, they roll up the sidewalks early, about 8:00 pm, so I hit the store and bought stuff for sandwiches, some cup-o-noodle soups and topped it off with Haagen Daaz Ice Cream bars. But John Day, now that’s a two horse town! There’s a real restaurant there, with booths made of something besides cracked naugahyde! I scoped out the Outpost Pub & Grill and decided I was going to be sitting there ordering a real meal before they closed, with or without my sweaty, lycra-clad boys! 
Cheap motels and bad food aside, John’s Oregon Blue Mountain 1200 is a great drive, and a great ride for the crazy randonneur-types. I saw Hell’s Canyon, lots of windmills, ghost towns, beautiful farmland, rangeland, forests, and wildflower-filled meadows. I got my shopping/gallery fix (and a good salad) in Joseph, and learned a bit about the John Day Fossil Beds, The Oregon Trail, and, of course, tavern food…!
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