9/4: into Oregon

Almost 70mi today. At least 10 out of our way, though. 

We awoke to sunrise over the salmon channel. Gabe was right -- every different angle of the sun makes a different beautiful scene. 

Biked a bit through some back country full of cows and rusty farm equipment to get to another ferry, this one much smaller:

Picture the three of us clattering our bikes down this gangplank, nervous like foals going down that metal walkway.

This would be the start of a long time along the Lewis and Clark trail. We ground upwards a couple hours to get to this vista in Oregon:

The route was not very scenic, but lots of blackberries on the roadside:

Matt and Gabe would be popping these at any opportunity, but I don't think I had a single wild blackberry the whole trip. Hadn't they heard of Agent Orange?

After a ton of climbs and dips, we got to Astoria, which was extremely quaint and charming:

Gabe reposed in front of a legitimate trading store. Too quaint for me to check out.

The vibe is incredibly west coast. Even in town, we would just lean our bikes outside a shop and go in to order. For sure it was a false sense of security, but I guess we lucked out and never had any problems.

 Got lunch at the well-reviewed Bowpicker's, a converted fishing ship that sold fish and chips:

They don't use ordinary whitefish or cod. Not sure what it was, but it was firm and good. They had a decal from the route maps we're using!:

Those posted hours are very typically west coast, IMO.

As we ate, a few other bike tourist parties coasted by. We gave them very firm nods, as though we'd been doing this all our lives.

After lunch, we continued along the path of the trail toward the sea. We could have gone on 101 for most of it, but this way was more scenic. Extremely hard climbing, but beautiful. 

Eventually, we got back onto 101, at which point I started singing the OC theme song. We wanted to camp on the beach and got lost trying to find the campground. Seems like beachfront property development might have taken camping out at that site. Developers clearly couldn't keep out the local fauna, though:

We cautiously biked through this herd of elk to the beach, and then back when it didn't have camping. I haven't been this close to large wild animals in the open before. At one point, an elk was maybe 20 feet from us. The whole time we crept by it, I thought, "we're so screwed in one of these charges us. What about the whole herd?"

So we doubled back to an RV camp. 

Cons:

- no view

- expensive

Pros:

- hot showers

- laundry

- camp kitty cat

- wifi

The hellish climbs and fast descents made me think of something -- ups and downs can follow one another in life. It's the ups that are fun in life, though. If you can live out the hard parts, there just might be a reward just around the bend. 

9/4 pics: https://picasaweb.google.com/105909573807230408134/BikeTour94?authkey=Gv1sRgCIXotIb7iu7YZw

9/4 video: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6tGRkDszv0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sspL4FwKPCI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMPRl1AJCrE