Musical Chairs and the Eclipse

On Friday, we reconnected with our route from this past May, and from there we loaded up our bikes and drove to Catherine Creek State Park, near Union, OR.  It is a no-reservation campground, but unknown to us, that policy had been changed for this weekend, due to the forecast influx of people watching the big eclipse.  We knew we were a little to close to the path of totality, and that camping could be an issue, but we weren't quite expecting that pretty much anything that could be reserved within 100 miles of here had been snapped up early in the spring.

Joseph, OR with Wallowa Mountains in the background.

But fortunately, the day use area at Catherine Creek was opened for camping for this weekend only.  We ended up renting two parking stalls for $10 per stall.  And right now (on Saturday), we have the entire day use area to ourselves, so we feel like we did OK.

Catherine Creek Day Use Area - our own private campground!

The eclipse is like playing musical chairs - you want to have a place to sit when the music stops, which is why we will remain here through Monday night.  On Tuesday we will get up early and drive to near Sumpter, OR to a point where we rode earlier in the year.  From there we will head into north central Oregon.

Backseat driver...