Riding At Last...

Fort Stevens State Park - 4th of July weekend - raises the question as to how many people you can get into a campground. I thought Colorado state parks was notorious for cramming the most campers into any given space but the folks at Fort Stevens make Colorado seem like amateurs. Row after row of motorhomes and rv's interspersed with a yurt village and the occasional (very occasional!) tent thrown in for good measure. It's reach out and touch your neighbor, so it's a good thing that people seem friendly. When we hit the coast the weather socked in and we go to sleep under dark, threatening skies.

The next morning we awake to a steady drizzle but we're up at the crack of dawn, still in sync with mountain standard rather than local time. We take a quick drive out to see the beach and Chinook is baptized in cold Pacific water as we watch from a distance as waves roll in as if on a mission. Fort Stevens encompasses a spit of land jutting out into the Pacific at the mouth of the mighty Columbia River which spills an enormous volume of fresh water at about 7 knots into the ocean. The location where this mixing of fresh and salt water takes place is called the Columbia River Bar and is host to some of the roughest weather on the west coast. There is a maritime museum in Astoria that indicates that more than 2,000 ships have gone down in the rough seas in this area. Standing on Terra Firma and staring out at the swells its easy to see why these waters are so respected and feared by sailors.

Then it's off to drop the car at the Astoria chamber of commerce which is nice enough to allow long distance cyclists the use of their parking lot.  Astoria, which is about 90 miles from Portland, has a lot of history. If you are in town make sure to plan a stop at the Astoria Tower on who's exterior is etched some of the more momentous historical happenings over the last couple of centuries. There is also a heck of hill getting up to the base of the tower, so less ambitious cyclists might want to figure another way up. The Tower, which is open from dawn to dusk, let's folks with not tired legs to climb several hundred steps up a circular staircase. At the top you exit out at the top of the tower where you are treated to some fantastic views in all directions. Of course, on a foggy day you'll be treated to some dazzling and up close vistas of the inside of a cloud, but if you were silly enough to climb to the top knowing that the tower was fogged in then that is what you get. 

As we head off over the bridge heading out of Astoria the drizzle let's up and we're optimistic about the day ahead. Heading south on 101 it's obvious that we had better get used to holiday weekend traffic for it's a steady stream of cars, rv's, trucks, and motorcycles zooming by us. When we were driving up I noticed that the locals pretty much add a generous 15-20 mph to the posted speed but for the most part they are pretty well behaved with the occasional double toot of the horn or wave out the window. We weren't quite sure what the terrain would be like - route profiles are notoriously hard to translate into actual effort expended on the pavement. We experience a mix of flats, rollers and the occasional long climb. I have to realize that we are starting at sea level so when my Garmin tells me I've climbed 5-6 hundred vertical feet its noticeable in the legs especially when we do it over and over again.

As usual we bite off more than we can chew so by the time we reach Manzanita Sophie and I are pretty tired. Chinook, on the other hand, is well rested after his nice jaunt up hill and over dale. Along the way from Cannon Beach to Manzanita there are some spectacular overlooks with amazing vistas. There's even a tunnel where you press a special button to alert motorists that there are cyclists in the tunnel. Heading south the tunnel is an uphill climb and the button for the sign neglects to indicate how long the warning lights are activated for. So we press the button, pedal like heck ( or as close to heck as legs with 40 miles in them can get), and hope the gods are on our side and that drivers won't be able to text, tweet, or chat on their mobile devices while in a tunnel covered with several hundred feet of rock overhead.