Mary's Peak

This Spring I saw a discussion on a website raving about a ride to a place called Mary's Peak.  I looked it up and saw that it was pretty far south near Corvallis, Oregon.  Looking closer at the road on my route planning software it looked really good: 

However, it was a long way there for a one-day ride.  I put it aside as one I wanted to do some day.  My chance came this week because Big Mike was back in town and brought his bike.  Mike has no problem riding big daily miles, and since he had not ridden for awhile he was hot to go.  He was actually in town for three days of riding, and the first two days we rode some of the familiar local routes.  In fact, the whole crew was along on the first day: 

 After that day it was just Mike and I and Mary's Peak was the climax of the three days with the ride to the top giving us views of the Willamette Valley during our lunch break: 

 

The ride turned out to be even longer than I expected due to some navigation problems we had in the beginning, and I ended up with 392 miles for the day.  It was definitely worth it, though, and I will be back.  

Due to the pandemic I have not been able to do any out-of-the-area rides this year, but this three day ride that included a new area did a pretty good job of satisfying my need to tour, and it was actually nice to be able to come back home each night.