May 25th
May 25, 2019
Milepost ~444
Slept well. Got great breakfast and finished yesterday’s blog post at the bistro in town that Nell had recommended. The orange juice was fabulous and the mocha was also quite good.
Was back at the apartment, getting finished with packing when Nell’s sister came back to her place and we chatted for almost an hour about adventure and the future, before I finally took off after 10, and rolled back down to the shoreline trail which I took for a few miles. It’s pretty nice, being offroad (not even road crossings for the most part) and water-view so yay! But there are some railroad tracks running with it that are slightly hazardous in a few places.
Left Astoria via an odd “back way” (Business 101) that took me across some shorter, low traffic bridges instead of the epic one or the less epic but still long one. I haven’t ever ridden over the huge bridge in the picture, and it seems to have a decent “way” for bikes on it according to google maps, so maybe in the future. Or, not…I think the route I’m taking avoids it intentionally since sometimes what’s “designed” for bikers is still pretty unpleasant and I think this route has been designed very intentionally, and carefully routed around some unfortunate infrastructure (I am thinking especially of some places in British Columbia).
The morning was pretty good - back road, still mostly dry, with 1 out of 4 epic climbs completed just before lunch.
Stopped at the Lewis & Clark national historic…park thing (called “Fort Clatsop”), and it was really interesting! I didn’t actually know much about the expedition but I learned a ton and the park was pretty and it was where they camped for the winter of 1806…I hadn’t even understood somehow it was a multi-year undertaking!
*(also I learned that the terminology for last-century logging practices is pretty funny)*
This was also the first time I’d seen the ocean in…well, maybe on this trip? Lots of sounds and stuff but this was ocean times in astoria and seaside so I took a suggestive picture:
Lunch in Seaside. Should have waited beyond the first place I saw; I both forgot from previous visits and failed to understand from the clear label on the map that it is a big town and there would be a large variety of food options, so I stopped at a mildly bad sandwich shop. I wasn’t aware it was mildly bad before I got my food, but I ate it anyway.
After lunch it was mostly highway riding in the rain. Over 3000 feet of climbing today including in addition to the one before lunch, 3 other fairly sustained climbs from 0 to around 600 feet. Those are heartbreaking unless they ascend verrrry slowly (spoiler: these did not), especially when it’s cold and rainy and you’ll never be warm and dry again and you just want to be there already and WHY ISN’T IT OVER YET. Screaming helps, it turns out! Fortunately, way less than 1/3rd of that elevation change tomorrow and no sustained climbs at all.
At several great viewpoints where I saw rain raining rainily, I could always see the surf but not usually anything past it. Whale scouting NOT in effect. I stopped taking pictures when I no longer had anything dry to dry off the camera lens. Even before then I failed to realize it was smudgy so notsure many pictures today came out.
There were tunnels and bridges without shoulders, but with smallsmall sidewalks that I wouldn’t have been able to ride reliably and comfortably on but could just walk on, so I did.
*(Not my idea of a good time, though I in general like tunnels!)*
Had a navigation fail in the last lap coming into campground which was a super frustrating end to the day when I made 3 wrong turns in a row and committed (down some big hills) to each, that I then had to grumble my way back up. Campground entirely full last night except hiker biker where we got to cruise in past a line of cars being turned away and camp in a rather nice facility (raised tent pads == no flooding likely, storage boxes with usb chargers, water and trash at the campground rather than down the way as usual). Met neighbors; received free beer from a family in the largest tent I’ve ever seen who tour using a trailer and e-bike (and selective routes - they don’t go up huge hills or on low-shoulder routes if possible since their 9 year old rides her own bike with them.). When you tour with a trailer, he says, you bring as much stuff as you want. They had wetsuits and coolers and beer they had no intention of drinking “some airbnb person left this in our house, we won’t drink it…” and they brought it here on a bike. Dude seemed pretty legit and his wife and daughter were nice too.
Written by Chris McCraw who resides in Portland, OR but maybe his heart is on the bike?