Day 6 - 7/21: Nehalem to Neskowin via Slab Creek Rd

A day of great adventure and beautiful sights not to be missed! Wait... but not until we spent an hour drinking coffee in Manzaneeta -- a cool small town off the 101 worth visiting. At the crazy early hour of 11 AM we finally hit the road with big plans.

Our plan was to take a detour South of Tillamook around Meare’s Point and ride the three heads. In Oregon a head or cape means a big climb, but also outrageous views of the coast. We like to climb, so it was no question that we would hit every cape and head we could find on the coast. We were not in a rush. We wanted to take it all in.

When we go to Meare’s Point Road, the entry to our 18 mile loop to the heads, the sign said that the road was closed. We went anyway, knowing that the chances were very good that we would be able to get through, and if so, we would have a breathtakingly beautiful road to ourselves. And... we were right. After fighting a headwind for six miles we turned South and then starts a climb up to the head. At the top we found a path to the largest Sitka Spruce in Oregon, measuring 38 feet in circumference and 12.5 feet diameter. Wow.

The descents here are delightfully long and smooth, with hardly any breaking needed as they wind down through banked curves. 

We landed in Oceanside where I saw a sign for a bake sale. “You know you want some baked goods!” I yelled up to Todd. He hardly hesitated as he turned around. And, after making friends with all the ladies, ate 3 pieces of cake and one cookie.

After that pit stop we cruised along the coast to view upon view of stunning stacks and cliffs and wild surf.

Miles buzzed by with a strong wind until we found ourselves hungry for dinner, but still no where we wanted to be. So we found a storage area out of the wind and cooked up a quick meal of tuna, cheese, rice and peas. Yum. Nice ambiance:

Fortified we decided to milk the day by taking another detour from 101’s traffic and just find a place to sleep on the side of the road. We turned East onto Slab Creek Rd south of Niskowa. Ten miles or so up a beautiful quiet road we silently rode through beautiful rich Oregon valley, eventually leading to a school that offered he perfect place to camp: a flat grassy corner of a field bordered by a cool creek to wash off.

With dark fast approaching we set up the tent and scrambled down to the creek. Todd slipped and fell, really slamming his ribs resulting in what we thought would be a big bruise, but several days later discovered was a cracked or broken rib. Ouch. More on that later.

Day 5: Astoria to Nehalem Campground

Our day started late due to all the pancakes we had to eat. Tough job! It was a very pleasant ride along the Lewis and Clark Road, through a wide valley, avoiding the busyness of 101. We would be on it soon enough. When we popped out at Seaside I was surprised by the hubbub of what looked similar to a ocean resort town in Maryland. Cars cruised by us one after another in a long line, but the shoulder was great, the tail wind was huge and we enjoyed seeing all the sites.

That night we stayed at Nehalem state park for $10. The sign said “FULL”, but certain Oregon State parks have a Hike and Bike site that reserves camping sites for hikers and bikers. So we cruised in to find the campsite quite full. It was occupied mostly by a motley crew of hikers. A young couple, two older men, and a middle-aged woman. Except for the woman, they all had street clothes on and a mish mash of gear. The young man looked like a prophet with a beard down to his chest and long hair out the back. The woman had dreads and was full of life. The two older men were hard to describe, but we both quickly stereotyped the whole crew when we said to each other, “We’d better lock our bikes.” It’s a common thing on a trip like this. You ride up to a campsite or a town and you classify the people and the possible ramifications of meeting up with them. It’s probably because you are vulnerable on a bike... You have no back-ups. Everything you bring is useful so you are extra careful all the time about losing, breaking or having stuff stolen. I believe humans do this naturally, all the time, classifying people into friend or foe categories, almost sub-consciously, in a blink! Regardless, we still felt humbled when they turned out to be very kind and giving people. This happens over and over again on a bike trip.

After dinner we went through the campsite to the ocean. The Pacific has a totally different feel from the Atlantic. It just feels bigger, deeper and more powerful. Wow.

On the way we passed through the Horse Camp. It is so cool. People bring their horses to camp with and ride them on the beach. We slept well and got a pretty good start on what would be a longer day of riding.

Here are few pics from the day!

A very happy man!

Day 4: To the Ocean!

Day 4: Stubb Stewart Campground to Astoria

We woke up to another beautiful day, feeling ready to get to the coast. Our bike bags are packed full; mine is heavier than I’ve ever experienced as we ride the last ten miles of the rail trail.

Panniers vs Trailers: Good panniers are important. We like Ortlieb, which are the same material as dry bags but with hefty hardware to attach to your racks. The load you carry is similar to a long distance back packer 50 - 80 lbs.. More and more people are using trailers that attach to the rear axle. This is an easy way to convert a standard road bike to a long-haul touring bike. We almost went with a trailer, but for a couple of reasons decided to go with old-school touring bikes and panniers. One factor is that the torque of the heavy load might be rough on our carbon bikes and second, hauling a trailer prevents drafting, something I do a lot of behind Todd to save energy.

Traditional touring bikes have brazeons for attaching the racks, longer wheel base and heavier duty cranks and breaks. Steel helps with the road shock on the body, allowing for more comfortable miles. A really great saddle is probably more important than anything. The problem is-- what one person loves might cause another person endless misery, so try to find shops that will allow you to demo saddles and then demo for at least a 60 mile ride. All saddles feel pretty great for 30-40 miles.

Back to the trip...

We got to the end of the rail trail in Vernonia and heard the rumbling of trucks and then saw the huge logging trucks barrelling along route 47... the road we were supposed to be on for a good number of miles! With hesitation we got on the road. To our delight the truckers were very polite and safe, giving us plenty of room and warning. We waved as they passed and they flashed their lights in response.

The road from Vernonia to Astoria appears to travel through the wilderness, but as we ride, we come across a peppering of houses, vacant churches and small businesses. It seems right for our first significant day of riding not to be thrown completely into the wilds. We pass  Federal Roosevelt Elk viewing area just to find people haying the fields where the elk usually roam. We pass long stretches of quiet winding roads and small towns. We have lunch at a defunct church: hummus, cheese on bread. Yum.

We finally come across a proper store -- the Big “O” Saloon --- and waddle in to indulge ourselves. Todd chooses local beef jerky and I choose Kettle House Dijon Chips. We share a “throwback” Pepsi (contains real sugar!)

The interior of the saloon shows the suspenders of different logging companies.

Food on a bike tour: The body does some amazing things when you ride lots of miles every day, hauling lots of gear. The most amazing thing to me is that it just keeps going. We can ride ten days or more in a row and not feel too tired. But this depends a lot on getting a lot of fuel in the tank. I can eat many foods on a trip that I can’t eat at home without feeling yucky. A few slugs of a cold Coca-Cola can be the best thing in the world at mile 80, but at home the sweetness is too much. It is important to have solid go-to foods on board and handy at all times. I eat Larabars, gorp and keep a few Hammer Gels on hand for when the going gets really tough. End of day eating has to be substantial to give the muscles what they need to rebuild while you sleep. Central to this is Protein. One of our favorites is tuna-rice-quinoa-pea-cheese casserole. It is super easy to make with quick rice and quinoa. I also carry a few avocados and hummus for lunch to give us a break from peanut butter and jelly. An equally favorite dinner food are the Indian Tasty-bite dinners that are vacuum packed, inexpensive and super tasty. We eat them with tons of rice and cheese. For breakie we eat Uncle Bob’s GF hot cereal with dried fruit and … you guessed it.. cheese. Special occasions call for eggs and cheese. Gluten Free diet often leaves me with only soft corn tortillas with which I make bean, egg, cheese wraps for breakie.

Back to the trip...

After the saloon stop we made our way down the Young River Valley and approached Astoria from the South---highly recommended. Astoria rises up out of the horizon -- a town that looks perched on a hill, surrounded by ocean. It is very lovely.

After crossing a bridge on the very narrow and high sidewalk we had to creep our way up very steep roads to get up and then over to the city itself, which looks like a typical ocean side town. We ate out for the first time, burgers and fish and chips and micro-brew beers. Anyone who is spoiled by Vermont beer will not be disappointed here.

Astoria is beautiful! It is a grand place to start the trip with the full blast of the Pacific coming in and fish and chips to be eaten.

After dinner we crept our way up the steep hill again (800 ft) and up even farther to the house of our second warm showers hosts-- Meredith and Jason. They are a young couple who love to host cyclists. They get about 4-5 calls or email requests a week since Astoria is the start of the Oregon Coast trail and a published transcontinental bike ride. They are currently the only hosts listed for Astoria. Despite expecting three other cyclists and three family members they welcomed us into their home cheerfully.

Here is the view from their garage of the famously-scary-to-bike-across bridge connecting Astoria to Washington State.

Jason is a Coast Guard helicopter pilot and had many good stories to tell and a quiver of bikes to rival ours! The view out of his garage was fantastic and so was sitting in the Lazy Boy!

This visit was one of the highlights of our trip. The other cyclists were from the Netherlands and had just finished a cross country trip. Margaret, Paul and Rick. They were about our age and very warm and open.

Jason made us carrot cake and fruit cobbler, made a fire outside and Meredith treated us to toasted sweet sandwiches over the open fire. In the morning they made all of us sweet potato ginger pancakes and good coffee while we chatted. At one point, as I was talking to his mom and hearing her describe life after the death of her husband, tears travelled down my face as I thought about how we were all strangers 24 hours ago.

Sandy, Jason and Meredith

Thank you Jason and Meredith!

Day 3: Marion Berries and Rail Trail

According to the Oregon state website for cyclists, there are three decent ways to get to the coast from Portland area. They all leave from HIllsboro. http://www.portlandoregon.gov/transportation/article/301633

We chose the Northern-most one because of the swell rail trail from Banks to Vernonia.

First we had to get to the trailhead in Banks by riding through farmland... gorgeous wheat, hay and berry fields. We stopped when we saw a sign for Marion berries. We had seen them featured in an episode of "Portlandia" and had never tried them. We thought they were a unique berry that Oregon folks were proud of but wasn’t that great, just unique. Well. they were amazing and we hid out in a dirty old farm equipment shed and ate a whole pint!















The landscape in this part of Oregon is golden and rolls away from your eyes towards distant mountains. Beautiful quiet roads and fair weather.




With bellies full of berries we made it to the trailhead and entered into the peaceful, serene world of this trail.



The weather was dry and the air was sweet as we peddled slowly along on a gorgeous trail that wound its way gently up into the mountains:







After lunch we found the trail to the hike and campsite. It was ¾ mile on a hiking trail, but we decided to try to ride our bikes up there. It was quite a fun challenge as we navigated steep grades and roots.



But we made it, and found ourselves in one of the most beautiful campsites I have seen. Hike and Bike campsites run by the state are inexpensive, usually $5 a person.







The campsite is close to the ranger station, has bathrooms and water but feels remote. We slept very well!

Day 2: Have you ever forgotten to act your age?

After a nice long swim in the Indian Brook Reservoir we headed to the airport. Lisa volunteered to take us... great. Oh wait, we have two bike boxes and three humans. Where would the third person sit? “I know!” Todd said, “I’ll just slip in here behind the front seat," pointing to the 18-inch foot space. Lisa, being a good law-abiding driver, was clearly aware that it was against the law to travel without a seat belt, but she relented after she saw that her Papi would not change his mind and watched as he contorted his body to fit in the small space.

The airport process was smooth, although I was very nervous when the TSA man said they would need to take everything out of the boxes. And Todd was nervous when the woman checking in the boxes said we might have to pay more if we packed anything but bikes in the boxes. Given we packed most everything we needed for the trip in there in order to pad the bikes and avoid extra baggage fees, we thought we’d be paying big bucks. But alas, she gave us a break. Must have been our eager smiles. In the end, the TSA man opened our boxes, looked in and decided it wasn’t worth the effort! Phew.

We landed in Portland at midnight. Todd had read up on how great it was to sleep in the Portland airport so we decided not to pay $100 for a hotel bed we would end up sleeping in for just a few hours. Better to save that for the many calories we would nneed as fuel for the journney. When we got off the plan we immediately set about looking for the perfect place to set up “camp.” And we found it near a far baggage claim, behind a computer station.








We woke up at 4:00 Pacific time to the carpet cleaners zooming all around us. But, no worries, we were ready to get up and put our bikes together at the always handy airport bike assembly station! After a few hours of low blood sugar bike assembly delerium, fueled by the smell of Phil’s bike grease, we set off out of the airport... straight onto a bike path.

If you love to ride your bike, this is already a trip worth doing. You can ride right from the airport 11.2 miles to downtown Portland on a bike path and marked bike lanes. We stopped along the way to gorge on blackberries that lined the otherwise derelict bike path. We carried on through bungalow neighborhoods and began to think about our first cup of coffee. We kept our eyes peeled for any sign of hipsters. And we found our first hip and friendly person outside a very relaxed but busy cofffee shop. Here she is with her little dog.



She could have talked for hours about all the great things to do in Oregon, but we had coffee to drink, so we went inside. When I asked the owner if he had any gluten free options, he jumped out from behind the counter to talk to me and show what he had. Yummy stuff. We sat next to a young man named Eben, from Maine, who was studying at University of Oregon who directed us to Whole Foods and the coolest bike shops.

Outside, a man pulled up on his bike and asked where we were headed then offered us a map of the city and told us to stop by his office down in City Hall to get more free maps. Yippeeee! People here sure are friendly.

Only a few blocks away we found City Bikes, a great non profit cooperative. Fun and funky shop that was filled with used parts. Todd was soon rooting through bins and boxes and came up with a set of toe clips, a pair of clip covers, and a swatch of spare Mr. Tuffy to boot.. "$6 for the pile" offered the helpful coop store clerk. Yes! We like Portland.














We carried on to the Esplenade, finely featured in the first episode of "Portlandia", with its widely paved path running on both sides of the Willamette River. We got a great view of the city and its citizens. From there we made our way up into the city and found bike lanes to die for! Some right down the middle of the road!



It felt so weird to be “hogging” up the road, but just amazing to ride through a city with such a buffer surrounding you... a far cry from my commute to Winooski. We had a beautiful picnic lunch and headed down to City Hall to pick up the maps and see the famous statuto of Portlandia. Wow.. It was huge and powerful. The literature explained that it is the second biggest of its kind after the Statue of Liberty.


We took in a bunch more simple sights. We could have stayed all day, but were eager to ride our bikes and get a move on out of the city and to our first destination: Hillsboro. The route led us up into Washington Park -- a steep and windy road that leads to the International Rose Garden and the Zoo. We hit the Rose Garden at peak season. Oh my goodness. You would have to be half a very hardened human not to be deeply moved by the beauty of this place. Acres of roses, of all description - scent, color, size. Wow.












The road was sweet and wound it’s way up through huge pine. After we got to the top, we basically cruised all the way down to Hillsboro.

In Hillsboro, through a sleep deprived stupor I had the best Gluten free pizza ever - sauteed asparagus, artichoke hearts, peppers, feta.

Our host met us in town on his bike to lead us back to his house. Walter and Nora greeted us. Walter is a Dutch American and told us all about the Dutch bikes. They are very cool, with built in bike locks and complete chain guards.

Our stay with them was lovely. Their house was filled with color and we smiled big smiles as we sunk into the big cushy bed. Check out their colorful kitchen:



Thank you Nora and Walter!

Repairs and Repurposing - How to save money for the important things... like coffee.

In order to afford more craft beers and fancy coffee in Portland Oregon, we do what we can to cut costs.

Exhibit A:  Todd needed a cover for his Chrome book so I found an old wetsuit from someone on the local swimming list serve and made one. Hipsters will be jealous. Savings: $40

Exhibit B: Cycling shorts built to wear all day on a bike are pricey. After a while the lycra breaks down. The first place to go is right on your butt. So... since I don't want the world viewing my naked backside, I took some old lycra and sewed some patches on two pairs of shorts. Savings: $200

Exhibit C: Between staying at Warmshowers hosts and camping we will probably spend less money than if we were at home. We will be fed a lot and won't be spending any money on gas. Savings: ??

Exhibit D: Who needs GPS? Paper maps are great and they force you to stop and ask locals for directions. This is how we find the beautiful back roads only locals know about, plus we get to hear a lot of great stories. Sometimes they even offer us food! Savings? $140 - $300

Grand Preparations

1 day to go! Todd perusing the spread of gear and bike parts

Preparing for three weeks of living on two wheels is no small task! Good thing my parents trained me to be an expert packer. Every summer our family would pack seven kids, a dog, and everything we needed for the summer in one Volkswagen van. My dad, in particular, was really good at using every square inch of space. He even filled the foot space of the rear seats and then put a baby mattress on top for us to lay across (no seat belts). On the nine hour drive to NH two of us would take turns sleeping on the mattress. Sometimes we would be fed Benadryl.

Lucky for us Roger, the man from whom Todd bought his touring bike, posted a bunch of great pages with photos on how to pack for a long bike trip. 

http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/page/?o=1&page_id=140233&v=dK

If you click on the "Next" button on the bottom, you will get a total of seven pages detailing what and how to pack. 

We are a bit more minimalist than he is, but you get the general idea.

Packing our bikes is like working out one of those wrought iron puzzles at a bar. Patience. Patience. Lucky for us, the Portland airport has it's own Bike Assembly area near the MAX station. So we will put our bikes together right at the airport (at 1:00 AM) Even luckier that it is rated one of the best airports to sleep in!

PDX's bike assembly station

We are all set with a WarmShowers host for the first real night in Oregon. WarmShowers.org is a wonderful community of cyclists and people who want to support cyclists by hosting them while they are on their tours. If you go to their website you will see a map with all the hosts flagged all over the world. Almost every where you can cycle there will be someone who wants to help you out and feed  you a meal. If you need to feel good about humanity, strap a few heavy bags on  your bike and head out on the road. People just want to help you.

A little bit of Mark Twain to get us moving:

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” 

― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad/Roughing It

Be well!