Ontario to Juntura

Ontario to Juntura

So I am here in a small town called Juntura, and am only 100 miles west into Oregon. When leaving the canyon the last three miles of our ride today, we came out in a beautiful valley. The valley offered us a great view to look at with the mountains coming into it and a simple river in the bed of it. I did not realize the type of community I was entering, a place where everyone is friendly and watches out for each other.

When setting up this host, it took me a long time to actually get on the found with a soul that is a citizen of the town. I had to actually call a church in a nearby town to ask if anyone lived out there, and this was how we got connected with the McKae family. Jim & Joyce own ranch land all along town for their sheep and cattle. They have three boys and three girls whom they adopted from Haiti, and they are all polite and welcoming young people.

The town has a post office, a school, a community center and Café Oasis that also serves as a Motel. Other than these key locations, I found a handful houses that don’t even make up 50 people. In these houses, we met the school teacher for K-5th grade (grand total of 5 kids), Tammy the owner of the café and a retired government worker whose wife is writing an article about our group.

The first place I hit up in town after our 70 mile journey through the canyons along a river was the Oasis Café. I of course tried another finely baked pie with this one being filled with blackberries. I left once I heard about all of the food waiting for us at our host location. There were sandwiches, sweet, drinks and fruits of all nature waiting for our tummies. They informed me of the showers awaiting us at the motel and I quickly walked over.

During this walk, I learned the importance of wearing shoes around this area. My feet were simply attacked by little pricky thorns that I had to take out one by one. I adapted and stayed away from the lethal objects, and found a nice place to sit and write postcards after my shower. It was fun watching all of the many tourists and truck drivers coming through the town with some of them stopping and others just continuing on their way. Did any of them though understand how great of a community they were traveling through?

This is what makes Bike & Build so great; we get to interact with these types of places that most would miss driving through the country. Dinner was a fine array of meat and sausages from local ranchers along with salads for all. There was baked pie that convinced everyone to save room in their stomachs for. After dinner we talked with locals as they prepared to practice their calf roping skills. We spent the last three hours of the night talking, casually watching the calf roping, riding horses and spending time on our bikes.

As we go to sleep tonight, we may be sweating due to the lack of air conditioning but that is not what we will remember of our time. We will remember the great people, food and sites!