The 1981 Loop Tour was planned and guided by Dave and Charlene MacManiman. My recollections of the tour are more like a few snapshots—after all, it was 32 years ago.

As the pictures prove, we pedaled up beside the dam at Detroit Lake and at the town there made a left turn. A series of forest service roads with beautiful views led us uphill over a long haul to Timothy Lake. From there it was downhill into Madras. At that point I got separated from the main group and took the main road out of town, a couple of miles of highway grade apparently laid out by an engineer with a very straight ruler which proceeded in a straight line up the face of the escarpment till I reached the top, after which it was level but with a heavy crosswind on into the campsite at Palisade Coves campground on Billy Chinook Lake, the reservoir near Redmond. The main body of the group stayed at ground level on a road which followed the stream up to the dam at Billy Chinook. Unfortunately, the flat route was also into a heavy wind and the group was more than pooped when they got there (and everyone on these early tours carried all their own gear!)

We spent two nights at the lake. The most interesting animal feature of the environment was the raccoons, which were accustomed to the campers and had developed clever ways to filch food. We were forewarned so I stretched a line from one end of a large rock to the other and put food in a backpack. Next morning there were claw marks on the backpack and the zipper had been opened and a raccoon had helped himself to a couple of slices of bread.

I don’t remember our return route on this tour. We were close enough to Sisters so that we might have gone over McKenzie Pass (I know we did that on one tour), or we might have returned by way of Hoodoo.

• Dave Wallace Mar 7, 2013

Spokesman Article by Charlene MacManiman