After our monstrous breakfast, we went back into the park to tour some of the historic sites within it. We followed the bike paths to the beach where we saw the rusting hull of the Peter Iredale, shipwrecked in 1906. Then we went to the site of an old artillery battery (Battery Russell) and walked through it. The battery was the only mainland target fired on by the Japanese in World War II.
We left at 11:00 to continue on to Nehalem Bay. On the way to Nehalem, we got our first views of some of the spectacular portions of the Oregon coast. As an added plus, there were blackberries nearby. Linda's bike computer cleared for no reason during the ride, so we lost all of our trip data up to that point. That was very frustrating! After a couple of long climbs and the Cape Arch Tunnel, we made it up to a scenic viewpoint where we could see our destination down below. All that was left was a fast, fun downhill to Nehalem.
As we sped down the last mountain pass, we stopped at the Manzanita market which was the last grocery store before Nehalem Bay State Park. Andrew, the Swiss we had met a few days earlier, sped by the grocery store towards the park while we were still stopped. Simone came down the hill a minute or two later and stopped to see if we had seen Andrew go by. We all headed off to the park together to find him. They were very strong riders and blew by us the first time we saw them on the road.
We got into camp at 4:00. At the hiker-biker site there was a woman there who introduced herself to us by saying she was hitchhiking. We thought she was homeless (from our experience in southern California) until we realized that she was the lady from Auburn, CA that Larry and Debbie had told us about who had an achilles problem. She had gotten tendonitis the first few days of her trip. Her husband continued on, while she hitched rides, waiting for her tendon to heal. They were both going to take a rest day in Nehalem and then try to continue on. We never saw them again and we'd be surprised if she was able to continue. That kind of injury just seems to require a lot of rest.
At the hiker/biker site, we shared a picnic table with Larry and Debbie. We also saw the Swiss couple again, and 2 more guys who pulled in later that evening. The hiker-biker site was away from the main campground. We had to carry water quite a ways for dinner. It was one of the only times during the trip that we used our water carrier.
After dinner we rode our bikes to the beach to see the sunset. Our bikes felt like they were jumping out from under us without all the gear! They had horse camps in this campground where they had corrals for the horses and space for a tent. Only 2 horses per corral, please. We had a treat at the hiker-biker site tonight - a fire! The stars were really pretty and clear this night.
Again, what we thought was supposed to be a 33.5 mile day ended up being about 10 miles longer. Good thing it was a short day anyway.
Our first stop of the day (other than for fresh blackerries by the side of the road) was the Tillamook Cheese Factory. We watched the cheese making process, then loaded up with handfuls of cheese samples. It was lunchtime so we decided to eat at the cheese factory. We had delicious hamburgers/sandwiches topped with fresh Tillamook cheese and washed them down with Henry Weinhards Draft Root Beer. We couldn't leave without trying some of the Tillamook ice cream everyone seemed to be eating. Was it ever delicious! Some of the best we've ever had. They even make their own fresh waffle cones on the premises.
Stuffed like pigs, we continued on towards the Three Capes Scenic Route. Climbing up to Cape Meares was the most difficult climb of the trip so far (not counting the sidetrip to Astoria Column). We saw the lighthouse and had a good view of the coast. It was only 10 to 15 miles to camp from there, but Linda was very tired. The next uphill was hard after the descent from the Cape.
When we finally got to Cape Lookout at 4:30 PM, we found that Larry and Debbie were already set up. They had skipped the scenic route and taken the shorter route that bypassed the steep hills. The hiker/biker site was very nice because each camp site was separate from the others and had its own picnic table. Unfortunately, we would later learn that this park would be more appropriately named Cape Mosquito. We took our showers and ate a pasta dinner. We decided that we needed to get an extra soap and soap dish so that we could each take a shower at the same time. Jim was getting tired of waiting for Linda to finish.
Peter and Alex, the 2 guys who pulled in late to Nehalem, showed up fairly late again. Peter is from Germany and had been traveling around the world for the last 12 months on his bike. Alex is from Washington, D.C. and had been traveling the USA since the end of May. He was easy to spot because he pulled a B.O.B. trailer instead of using panniers to carry his equipment. We also met a college girl who was doing a short tour with her father as a trial run to see how a cross-country trip next year might work out. She also pulled a trailer, although it was a different kind than Alex's.
We had another pretty sunset this evening. After dark, we had hoped to see a slide show about Mount St. Helens at the campsite, but because of technical difficulties they showed one about crashed planes instead. We left the slide show when the sound didn't work.
Immediately after we left camp we encountered a 2.7 mile steep climb over the cape. Not much time to get our legs warmed up. For lunch we were both cold and thinking about Clam Chowder. Much to our surprise, we found a micro-brewery in Lincoln City where the special of the day was Clam Chowder in a sourdough bowl. It really hit the spot.
After lunch, we stopped at a Chevron station to use the bathroom and an attendant told us how to avoid a long hill by taking the Otter Crest Loop. We didn't know if he was giving us the business because we had read in our book that the route was steep. As we continued riding, we met up with Debbie and Larry. Linda was really tired at this point and seeing them boosted her energy. We told them about the Otter Crest Loop and decided to chance it. What a great choice. Contrary to what the book had said, it had a smaller change in elevation than the main highway. As an added bonus, we saw a whale just off shore at the start of the Otter Crest Loop.
We had dinner at Abbey's Pizza in Newport before reaching the park. Linda thought we needed to order a Giant size pizza, but it turned out that her eyes were bigger than her stomach. Still, Jim did his part and ate half the pizza. We ended up with some good leftovers for the next day. Then we spied an espresso/ice cream shop where Jim had his favorite latte and we both had ice cream.
We got to South Beach at 7 PM and discovered that the hiker/biker site was covered with thorns that would be dangerous to bike tires. This camp had the hottest showers of the trip - scalding hot if you weren't careful. Long after dark and long after we had gone to bed, several families moved into the hiker/biker site because the rest of the campground was full. They were quite noisy and woke us up. There was one other cyclist in the camp, but he was one of those people who provided you with way too much information about himself in far too little time for us to be comfortable around him.
Jim was mentally wiped out today. We had a very strong headwind the entire day. We stopped at the Heceta Head Lighthouse at Devil's Elbow State Park and got stuck in a much too long tour of the lighthouse.
At about 11:30 AM we ran into Debbie and Larry in Yachats (pronounced ya-hots) and they told us about a Lion's club pancake breakfast down the street. We got in just before they shut their doors and ate a delicious, filling breakfast of pancakes, eggs, ham and sausage.
The Jessie Honeyman hiker/biker site is beautiful. They had completely redone and relocated it since the book we were using was published. The park itself would have been a great place to spend an extra day. It was located next to the Oregon Dunes, with a lake in the park near our site. After dinner, we went for a walk out on the dunes, then dipped our feet in the surprisingly bathtub-warm lake. Some kids were having fun jumping off the dunes into the sand 15-20 feet below. We plan to come back here again.
We were obviously quite hungry this night because for dinner our pot was completely full of food. We figured there was about 5 lbs. of food in there and we ate it all! We think that we hadn't been eating enough food so far in the trip. Besides the four of us cyclists, there were 3 German guys in the camp who were traveling the USA by Greyhound bus. Linda's mosquito bites from Cape Lookout were getting better, but it looked like she had chicken pox.
We stopped at the Oregon Dunes Overlook to see the sand dunes and read about them. Apparently, the parks department planted European beachgrass on the dunes to prevent erosion. It was a strange sight to see the dunes with the woods around them and no ocean in sight.
It started raining about 13 miles into the day when we were half way up one of the hills. We quickly stuffed all our clothes and the sleeping bags into large, plastic garbage bags and put on our jackets. We decided to continue riding and managed to keep pretty dry. We were afraid that our feet would get wet from the rain and road spray and that we'd have soaking wet shoes for the next few days, but even our feet stayed dry. Luckily, it only rained for about 15 minutes.
In Winchester Bay, we missed a turn and rode about 5 miles extra. We ended up in the dune buggy day use area and had to cycle back. Fortunately, we had nice tailwinds while we retraced our steps.
Approaching North Bend, the winds started to really gust. We decided to walk our bikes over the Coos River Bridge because the winds were so bad. Half way across the bridge, we looked back to see traffic stopped behind us because a chair had blown out of a pickup truck!
We had gone way too long without eating anything substantial and Linda was having a hard time. We finally made an emergency stop at a McDonald's where Linda had a Big Mac and fries and Jim had two Big Macs and fries. We trekked on into the headwinds hoping that we'd eventually get to Sunset Bay.
After our worst and hardest ride of the trip, we finally arrived at the campground to discover that our friends were not there. We were really disappointed and figured that they had gone somewhere else because of the weather. A little while later, in they rode with the same wind-beaten looks that we had. When we found out how hard of a day they also had, we all began to feel better having someone else to comiserate with.
The hiker/biker site was very small, but already had 2 tents set up when we arrived. One couple was from British Columbia and were just riding from someplace in Oregon to Eureka, CA. The other couple in the camp was a pair of women who we all suspected were more than friends. Later in the evening, Peter and Alex showed up after doing an extremely long ride. They had only ridden a short distance the day before because they had stopped to play golf!
Linda called her Mom and Dad after dinner to let them know we were still OK. They were finally getting used to us doing this trip. From the campsite, we could hear sea lions barking very loudly. Jim found some blackberry bushes in the park and filled two cups for dessert and breakfast. Delicious!
Back on the bikes, we took a route called Seven Devil's Road. This took us up a long climb to some really nice riding along the hilltop. The roads were dry and nearly traffic free. All in all, a very enjoyable first hour of riding. As we were going down the fast, curvy descent from the top of the hills, Linda was right behind Jim all the way. Jim wondered where Linda had gotten all this new found courage on the descents.
Later that morning we stopped in Bandon to tour the cheese factory there. It's size wasn't even on the same scale as the larger Tillamook cheese factory, but there were a lot more samples than there had been at Tillamook. Once again we loaded up on the small cubes of cheese. There must have been 12-20 different varieties of cheese to sample. Somehow we still found room to have breakfast in Bandon a few minutes later. After our meal, Linda didn't feel so good. She decided never again to have french fries when we still had more to ride. She felt terrible until they burned off.
We finally started getting some tailwinds the farther south we got. What a pleasure! This was what we had expected the entire trip. For nearly the entire day we had been traveling slightly inland from the coast on US 101.
When we got to Port Orford, a few miles from our destination, we turned a corner and were suddenly hit with a spectacular view at the Battle Rock viewing area. We were finally back on the coast, seeing the kind of rugged coastline that we had thought we'd see along the entire Oregon coast.
The hiker/biker site was in a shaded area near the campground entrance, so we shared a regular tent site with Larry and Debbie. We chose a sunny site with a nice breeze to give everything a chance to dry out and a chance for us to enjoy the sunshine for a change. There were 9 people in the hiker-biker site. After dinner we walked to the beach where we saw a sea otter in the surf just before sunset. The sand of the beach was dark in color and very coarse. We put our feet in the water and boy was it cold! We needed a good day like this after the difficulties of the previous day.
We had peanut butter sandwiches for lunch at the Arch Rock Viewpoint. It was very windy. There were lots of viewpoints today but our supply of water ran short. Jim was empty with 6 miles to go. Linda rationed hers. Linda also hit her highest speed ever down a hill today. It was way too fast!
We seemed to attract attention everywhere we went. There were 3 basic questions everyone asked us:
1. Where are you going?
2. On your bikes?
3. Are you kidding me?!?
We got into camp early today at 2:30 PM. The camp was in a beautiful setting high above the beach up on the cliffs. We shared a regular tent site again with Larry and Debbie in a pretty, wooded spot which Larry picked. The showers were really hot. What a great way to loosen the muscles up!
The town of Brookings was less than a mile south of the camp, so we all decided to go into town for dinner. Debbie took her bike to a bike shop because she had been having some shifting problems. The shop owner was so glad to see someone with quality components on their bike (Campagnolo) that he cleaned and tuned it up for free! We found a Mexican restaurant (Los Amigos) that we all agreed on and had a delicious meal. The service was a little strange. They'd bring one dinner out, and then there would be a couple minute gap before the next one arrived. It didn't matter though because the food was good. After dinner we rode over to an ice cream shop for some delicious ice cream that was made on the premises.
We got rolling at 8:38 AM and ate our 2 remaining apples before the California Agricultural Inspection station. We were very excited to make it to California! Another major milestone. The realization that we still had 3 weeks left made us realize how big California is. At the border we saw the large "Welcome To California" sign and stopped to get our pictures taken with it. We had promised ourselves we'd do that at the beginning of the trip. Linda had tears in her eyes when she saw the sign. It had been hard at times, but it was an incredible journey so far.
The next 20 miles were through rolling backroads. We stopped at the Denny's in Crescent City for a late breakfast that provided one of the more humorous moments of the trip. As we walked in the door we saw the usual signs stating that this was a no smoking establishment, personal checks not accepted, etc. There also were signs saying that they didn't participate in the Grand Slam special promotion. We had a very crabby waitress who only had 2 more days of work before she moved to San Jose. Jim asked about getting an extra pancake on one of the breakfasts and she went into a tirade about how they have no substitutions.
A few minutes later a couple from LA sat down at the table next to us. When the crabby one asked them what they wanted, the lady from LA said, "I have 3 requests: I want to smoke, I want to write a personal check, and I want the Grand Slam special!" Crabby went ballistic and started screaming that they didn't have the special. We were trying to keep from laughing as the LA lady kept telling Crabby, "It's a joke, it's just a joke." None of us got good service after that.
Leaving Crescent City we climbed 1200 feet in 3.5 miles. We saw a billboard at the base of the climb that read "Trees of Mystery - Only 16 minutes". Cool! This won't take long we thought!
Jim was much faster on the hills than Linda, but would wait for her at the top of each climb. After cresting the summit, we came upon a line of vehicles stopped because of a section of the highway that was under construction. We were able to go down the shoulder and pass all the cars, trucks, and RVs. Once we got past the unpaved section of highway where the construction work was going on, we screamed down the hill, hitting some of the fastest speeds of the trip. At the bottom, we were rewarded with a gorgeous view of the Pacific Ocean.
We had one more long, steep climb into the Redwoods State Park. Near the top it got cooler as we started to ride underneath the canopy of the redwoods. The 5-6 mile gradual descent to the campground was one of the most spectacular stretches of the entire trip. We were under the cooling shade of redwoods that reached hundreds of feet into the sky. Looking off to the sides we could see rays of light peeking through the canopy of the mist-shrouded giants. It was quite a solemn experience. Very quiet, very inspirational. We were awestruck by the time we got to the campground.
Unfortunately, our Canadian friends missed the first turnoff to the park and missed the great section of road that we had just traveled. They rode part of it the next morning, but we don't think they got the same feeling that we did.
Again, we shared a regular campsite with them. The hiker/biker site was just a grassy field in a clearing, so we picked a site among the grove of redwoods. We had to sign a release stating that we had been warned about the presence of bears in the campground and each site had sturdy metal food lockers to keep things out of reach of the bears. In a field next to the camp was a herd of grazing elk. While we were riding through the campground to select the best site we saw an elk sniffing around someone's campsite.
We put all of our panniers in the bear locker during the night. With our imaginations working overtime thinking that bears were behind every bush and tree, we were very paranoid while making our trips to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
