Travelers

To say you meet a broad assortment of folks while bicycle touring is an understatement. We were down in Tucson, AZ during Sophie's spring break this year with the intention of putting in some early season miles. While camped down there we met Chris who was doing an out and back overnight bike ride from Tucson and he had mentioned he was actually training to do the Oregon coast in July. We told him we were planning to do the same trip starting  around the 4th of July and he said he was planning about the same time. Way back in February we said we'd keep an eye out for each other on the road, and lo and behold on our second day we saw Chris at the hiker- biker campground. This is Chris's first long distance tour (he's finishing in San Francisco) and he says all his friends and coworkers think he's nuts and can't begin to comprehend what he's really doing. Chris had connected with two other cyclists also riding south. One is a school guidance counselor from California spending his summer riding south from Vancouver. The other is a bloke from Vancouver who used to work in I.T. but gave it up to spend two years cycling and building himself a log cabin somewhere yet to be determined in British Columbia. Rodney, another cyclist we met today introduces himself with a laminated paper that explains he's cycling from Vancouver to Ventura, CA and that he can't talk due to an accident that has left him with a speech impediment. With Rodney it's all about communicating via thumbs up or thumbs down. He's also got a physical handicap so it takes him a little longer to set up camp but see him on the road and he motors right along (that is to say he flys by us like we were standing still). Then there is the young guy named Ritchie from  England who also quit his job as a graphic designer and web developer, sold all his stuff, and bought himself a one-way ticket around the world. He's already cycled all over Europe and is going from Vancouver all the way south to Tijuana. Then he's using that one-way ticket to head to New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, and then Vietnam. He has the interesting habit of not getting started until afternoon so he tends to roll into camp around 7:00 every night. He's blogging about his adventures at "The World Beneath My Wheels" which I'll have to check out when I get somewhere with Internet access.

There are also groups of cyclists traveling the route. One of these groups we keep hopscotching back and forth with is a group of 26 kids, all about 15 years old, who are spending 19 days cycling from Vancouver to San Francisco. Their parents spent about $3,000 each so that their children could roll up and down hills, brave fierce winds and bugs galore, all while carrying all their possessions in fully loaded panniers on their bikes. They have four young adult guides along with them but as a group they are riding fully self-suported. When I was 15 I had no clue that such a trip was even possible - if I had been exposed to something like this at that age who knows where the roads might have taken me? Youth has it's advantage, and they seem to recover more quickly than us adults but  i take comfort in the fact that when they ride into camp at night they appear just as tired as the rest of us. We also met Kim and Kara, two ladies from Calgary who like us started out in Astoria. Our cars are parked side by side in the lot in Astoria but they are going farther each day than us trying to reach Eureka in the same time it takes Sophie, Chinook, and I to reach Crescent City so we haven't seen them since night number two or three. So this is the 'crowd' we are seeing on the road. If we were a day farther ahead, or a day behind, it would be a completely different group of road compadres that we would be seeing at the overlooks, grocery stores and campgrounds as we make our way south. Though to the cars that whiz by these cyclists warrant hardly a passing glance it's reassuring that you are really never alone on the ride, as on any given summer day there are probably many hundreds, if not thousands, of cyclists stretched all along the route from Canada to Mexico.

There are also a lot of hikers along the route we are riding. While some of Highway 101 is actually routed several miles inland the official Pacific Coast Hiking Trail wanders down the actual coast from cape to cape. Many of the folks we see walking along the highway are probably more down on their luck than interested in taking in the summer sights. Some look pretty rough and we purposely don't make much effort to interact with them. But they all seem headed somewhere, with someplace to go in mind. I hope I never meet the ones that don't have a destination of some kind. I'd hazard a guess that on the actual coast hiking trail you'd find a different kind of hiker. While walking along Highway 101 doesn't appear to be much fun it does at least offer a paved surface without unreasonable climbs and descents.

The coast trail where we have seen it seems to have no problem going up, down and over some pretty steep inclines (in Colorado I think this would pass for mountain climbing!) and I'm sure offers many spectacular viewpoints that motorists, and even us cyclists, can only dream about. The roadway also tends to stay at a certain elevation for a while where the hiking trail has no compunction about taking you from a 3-400 foot high cape right back down to the next beach which of course is at sea level and then back up to the next cape just around the corner. We don't see many folks actually using these trails so I'd guess if it's solitude you are really after then the coastal trail is the way to go.

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.

Mountain Home to the Sea

Day 2 starts off sunny and warm. Mountain Home, which started out as just a small blip on a big map turns out to be a nice not-so-little town complete with the requisite Walmart and all the culinary options we have come to expect and demand. Drive a little further though and you'll experience peaceful tree-lined streets and immaculate green parks. Our stop for the night is at the Mountain Home KOA campground which, due to it's distance from the highway, is on the side of town that time has seemingly passed by. This KOA though offers something that it's bigger and fancier cousins increasingly cannot offer: peace and quiet. It's the kind of quiet where you can hear the gentle summer breeze rustle through the leaves of the majestic cottonwood trees that shade all the sites. This KOA doesn't seem to have changed in decades. No hot tub or miniature golf course and the long gone pool has been filled in and replaced with horseshoe pits. The staff is wonderfully welcoming, the campsites are pristine, and the shower and restroom facilities are immaculate. In short, it's everything we could have hoped for after a long 642 mile jaunt from Rawlins.

Heading north on highway 84 through Idaho farmland the terrain starts to get more interesting as we cross into Oregon. The road snakes through winding canyons and up and over the Blue Mountains where the scent of pine makes me feel as if I'm still in Colorado. The elevation though continues to drop as we proceed toward the coast. Roadsigns tick off the mileage towards The Dalles and Portland, parts of the country I've never seen. We are roughly following the Oregon Trail and I can only imagine what it must have been like to travel this route a hundred and fifty years ago. Roadside memorials attest to the pioneers who explored this country in the late 1800's. To them it must have seemed wilderness in the extreme, but for the local indigenous peoples  who were already here it must have been a beautiful neighborhood as familiar to them as my drive to work is to me. Tonight we'll be in Astoria camping in Fort Stephens State Park before setting out on our bike trip in the morning.

The biggest indication of our drop in elevation is that we've left the cobalt blue skies of the high plains behind. Now the sky appears milky white and the infinite horizon I'm more used to has continued to creep in until I feel I'm in a fishbowl peering out. The mountains in the distance seem to appear out of the fog, though I'd hazard a guess that in the next couple of days as we journey south along the actual coast we'll be treated to fog of the real kind.

I've already mentioned my wife Sophie who is doing the trip with me. A tremendous life partner who keeps me young, she plans these excursions to the nth degree, for which I can't give her enough credit. But there is a third member of our little party. As I write this he's curled up in a ball in the back of the van, eyes closed and dreaming of the next rest area (Next Rest Area 26 Miles!).  His name is Chinook and he's fifty-five pounds of Siberian Husky. This isn't his first bike trip; last summer he tolerated my hauling his furry little hindquarters around in a Burley 'Tail Wagon' dog trailer as we spent two weeks bike touring the Selkirk Loop in northern Idaho and southern British Columbia.  He handled that trip so well we did'nt quite have the heart to leave furball behind for this one. We lost his twin brother Tundra to cancer two years ago, but Chinook is going to be one Colorado canine who will be able to lay claim to having dabbed four paws in the Pacific ocean.

1st Days...

1st days of vacation are always transition days, especially when the first day is a Friday, a day which would normally be filled with all the minutiae of a busy work day. Instead, I'm cruising across Wyoming on a beautiful July day with cotton ball clouds hanging in a gloriously blue sky. I-80 out of Laramie is not very busy as we steer west headed for Utah, then Idaho and our night's destination, a tiny spot on the map called Mtn. Home. Some people find the drive across Wyoming dull and boring as the sage brush blends into a 360 degree horizon, which by noon will itself disappear into a shimmering haze of heat. But I love it, absolutely mesmerized by the wide open spaces. For a cubicle cowboy, which seems to be my current fate, getting out where I can see for 20, 50, sometimes even a hundred miles or more is a blessing.

This year my wife Sophie and I are bound for Oregon to bicycle down the coast on highway 101. One of my coworkers, Karla, had planted the seed for this trip on a cold and snowy Denver day. She had returned from a business trip where she had taken a couple of extra days to drive the California portion. From her description it sounded like heaven as I stared out the window at work watching the snow blowing sideways and anticipating yet another brutal commute home in a blizzard.

Zipping along at highway speeds I notice the occasional group of antelope grazing on the still lush prarrie grasses, waving luxuriously in a stiff southwest breeze thanks to an abundant winter snowfall. Way out on the distance the peaks still show snow up high. For the antelope life is good right now, though they seem completely oblivious to the roar of the endless parade of trucks and cars whizzing  by.

We've already passed our first pair of cross-country cyclists hugging the still generous shoulder of the highway heading towards Rawlins. I honk twice as we go by. The leader looks up, sees the bikes on top of our car and recognizes the friendly toot and raises his arm in a wave. Given the wind speed and direction they are in for a long and challenging day of cycling. I'm reasonably certain they wouldn't wish for it to be any other way. Like the majestic pronghorn, the world of the bicycle tourist shrinks to what immediately surrounds them. Unlike me, steering 2,000 pounds of steel and covering more than a mile a minute, the cyclist sees in perfect focus and clarity everything around them. For me the landscape flys by in a too-quickly gone blur. For them, moments last longer. For them the tar-filled cracks I don't even notice are a sensory adventure. They don't just see them, they experience them, not just by sight but also by smell, and by feel as their steed's twin tires squish through the heat-softened black goo. I envy them the connection with their surroundings, the rush of the increasingly hot wind that still provides a touch of coolness as it evaporates the sweat from the back of their jersey.  Not just the smell, but the taste of the air as they labor up one hill after another pulling oxygen into their labored lungs like kids slurping an ice cream at the county fair. Soon enough I'll set aside my metal behemoth and join them.

The End of the Road

The misty weather continues with us as we ride south. For those continuing beyond Crescent City and farther down the California coast the next campground is more than sixty miles distant. We worry about the chance of rain until it answers us with a steady light drizzle. Crossing into California, with the requisite pictures being taken at the state "Welcome!" sign, it feels very muggy, a precursor of the heat that awaits our fellow cyclists as they continue on their way south. The biggest surprise of this trip is how cold the coast of Oregon is especially with a strong wind chill and a cool damp mist thrown in for good measure. None of us, save for Chinook with his deep fur coat, was prepared for the cold and the next time I ride this area I'm making sure to bring the long johns and balaclava. So much for summer at the beach!

The riding today is perhaps the easiest of the whole trip with a whopping 200 feet of elevation gain by halfway down the route and then flats and slight downhills into Crescent City on the back roads. The recommended route along the coast predominantly has us riding on actual Highway 101, but whenever there is a secondary backroad the route veers off the busy highway. That's all well and good, especially because there is far less traffic on these old roads, but we have learned that the old road builders didn't try to mold the topography to their wishes, instead they just followed the contours of the landscape. To cyclists on these alternate routes this means you do a lot more climbing than on the newer version of 101 where the road engineers made good use of dynamite and bulldozers to flatten out the ups and downs to accommodate the faster highway speeds of today. While you see some six, seven, and occasionally eight percent grades on the newer road it's not unusual on the back roads to come flying down one hill and to see you now have to re-climb all the elevation you just lost at a ten to fifteen percent grade. By week two these abrupt 'rolling' rises and descents are starting to play havoc with overstressed and not so young legs and joints.

Knowing that it is the last day helps, and the closer we get to Crescent City the more it's like leading the horse to the barn - not much encouragement needed. The end of a ride like this is always bittersweet - the allure of sleeping in a bed, not being out in the cold all day, and allowing too-tired and sore body parts to recuperate is offset by knowing that tomorrow we won't be heading down the roadway, seeing what's just up ahead, right around the corner, just waiting to be discovered by three intrepid traveling companions - Chinook, Sophie, and me.

On the watch for Jaws and Namu

Today is the last riding day of our trip down the Oregon coast. Tonight we'll be in Crescent City, CA. I woke up early this a.m. as Harris Beach has lots to see and explore and what better time to do it than at the crack of dawn. Chinook and I took a stroll down the "Marine Trail" which was a nice circuitous path down to the beach. Chinook, as always, led the way, sniffing at all the vegetation as he went. I've always wondered what it would be like to see the world through a pooches eyes, ears, and nostrils. That may never happen but I get to sample the experience vicariously through the fifty-five pounds of fur trotting ahead of me down the path. This morning there is some fog and light mist and it feels that we are the first creatures to ever set eyes on this part of the coast. As the trail meanders down to the surf ahead there is a 'sea stack', a huge hill of rock sticking up out of the ocean about twenty yards off shore. In it's middle is a triangular shaped crack approximately 15 yards wide and about the same in height. The crack goes completely through the sea stack and the ocean waves come right into the opening where they get compressed in the narrowed fissure. The net effect is that the pent up energy of the waves blows through the fissure expelling thousands of gallons of sea water onto the rocks we are approaching. Chinook is mesmerized and so am I as we both stand still taking in the show. I can't tell if the tide is coming in or going out, but the area at our feet is clearly underwater at high tide. I can only imagine the waves rolling into the area in front of us at high tide or when a storm front passes through. We continue down the trail that wraps around onto a sandy beach. Off shore the ocean looks peaceful and quiet and there are a couple of small boats half a mile offshore with kindred early risers already fishing for this day's catch. Last night, while I was in the campground cooking dinner Sophie and Chinook had come down to this same beach and saw a seal being washed to and fro in the waves at sunset. I've read that the riskiest time to be a marine mammal in the ocean is at sunrise or sunset as that is when the predators (my mind conjure up images of great white sharks big enough to swallow us whole) are most active. Looking at the water, which is not very clear and quite murky I can only imagine that for the hapless seal in the wrong place at the wrong time the only saving grace is that it would not see what was coming at it from the depths below. This morning, Chinook is happily oblivious to all of this as he runs into the surf belly deep before bounding back onto dry land. Signs along the Oregon coast ask beach visitors to report sightings of Killer Whales so as to track where they are. Fortunately we see neither Jaws nor Namu during our early morning foray. Then it's back up the hill to breakfast and then out on the road where the only things we have to worry about are logging trucks, inattentive RV drivers, and all sorts of local residents doing their best impression of small town Oregon rush hour.

Chinook Loves The Ocean

The daily distances we ride average around fifty miles with some days closer to sixty and others only thirty or thirty five. The weather these last couple of days has been spectacular (in other words sunny!) and when the weather's like that it's easier to put in some heavy duty miles. You also want to take advantage of the clear skies to see as much as you can because when the weather socks in you really can't see much at all. You'll be pedaling through the fog and hear the sound of the waves crashing on the beach or against the rocks, but you can't see them.

Today's route took us from Humbug State Park all the way down to Harris Beach State Park just north of the town of Brookings. The part of the coast is very scenic and the camera kept me busy every time we came around the next corner. Tomorrow we'll wrap up this ride in Crescent City, CA where we are renting a U-Haul truck to take us and our gear back to Astoria. For Sophie and I our legs are dictating that it's a good time to stop. Chinook, on the other hand, hasn't done anything more strenuous than decide which way to lay in his trailer as he watches the miles fly effortlessly by. We were not quite sure what he would make of the ocean, so I guess it's good to report that he seems to love it. He loves running up to the edge of the ocean as the waves recede and then racing ahead of the next incoming set of breakers as they rumble in. He's always been skittish around the water which we thought was part of his Siberian Husky-ness. For dogs bred to pull sleds over frozen tundra open water is a dangerous and potentially lethal trap to be avoided, but apparently the open ocean is different, at least for our pup. I think he'll actually miss it when we leave and it almost breaks my heart to realize that the chances of him again prancing and dancing in the shore break is relatively slim as our forays to the coast are so few and far between.