#21: Fifteenmile Road • 19.4 mi • 1528 ft • paved

Non-human animals witnessed on Fifteenmile road, so far:

-An escaped horse running down the road for a couple miles in front of the lead car of our neutralized Cat. 4 race peloton

-A short-legged dog that hopped its not-even-that-short fence and chased us for a few hundred feet

-A flock of turkeys gobbling in the road, before flapping up the onto the hillside

Fifteenmile road is a moveable feast — following the largest creek in the Dalles Watershed for many miles up a valley that’s wide enough to support a long string of farms and ranches, each more beautiful than the last.

Fifteenmile is also the silk road to the East, connecting to everything in the drier, grassier Eastern hills. My only complaint about Fifteenmile is that it doesn’t continue through along Fifteenmile Creek all the way to Dufur. Private ranch owners must have laid claim to those areas long ago.

In spite of this missed connection, Fifteenmile is still, unarguably, a very long, very mellow, very low-traffic road. And it’ll take you to a lot of places.