Tenino Old Oregon Trail Marker

Old Oregon Trail Marker

On Friday I decided to take the long way to work, which brought me into town via the main highway / Sussex where I stopped to take a picture of this marker. I've known about it and I've even ridden by it but hadn't stopped to take a picture until now.

I found an article about this marker in an article about the Seattle to Portland ride, which points out that this was the first marker laid by Ezra Meeker. That's the cool thing about taking a minute to look at markers like this, they remind us of history. Most of the time when I've gone past this marker I didn't stop, didn't really think about it much. It becomes an invisible piece of the landscape. But on the bike you have more of an opportunity to just stop and think about what is around you. In this case, a chance to stop and look at the marker, and then think about it and read a little about the history of it, coming away feeling a bit more connected to the history of this place.

It prompted me to download The Ox Team by Ezra Meeker, which looks very interesting to read, from Google Books.

I didn't set out on the ride with the goal of riding past the marker, but I did think about it before I left. My main objective for taking the long way was to get in more mileage and hills. My route took me down the Chehalis-Western trail to Waldrick, on over to old highway 99 and then up over "Chain Hill".

Coming up on Chain Hill

Chain Hill isn't a big hill. It's about 300' of climbing over a fairly short distance, but it isn't too bad. It's just one of the bigger hills around this fairly flat area. There are bigger hills, but I'll have to go off the paved roads to find them. This route is pretty much my new commute, except with the new route I'll turn right off Waldrick instead of left. Either way ends up being about 17 miles, a little farther for the new commute. And of course with the new commute I've  got ~17.5 miles to ride to get home. On this ride I took the Yelm-Tenino trail home, so my final distance was about 7 or 8 miles less. Still, it was good practice and fun!