Saturday June 13, 2015

This morning I was woken up at about 5:00 by the mourning doves, I managed to put ear plugs in and sleep for another hour. We were both away by 6:00 and ready to get moving.

We packed up the tent which was wet from the dew, and decided to go down the road for breakfast.

The Ranchman restaurant welcomed us in and our waitress knew everyone by name. We had a great “Seniors” breakfast – 55 years or older yeah we got a discount and a great breakfast.

We headed out to Seattle on a fairly busy road, but it had a wide shoulder. I spotted the first vintage car – Model T-Ford. I stopped expecting Ralf to get his camera out, but he said he had missed it, then the next one came along then a row of about 20 or more. He managed to snap a few photos.

As we came through this Town both of us had to laugh at this sign – Mixed-Use Zoning regulations in place.

We got our first view of Mount Rainier today. Mount Rainier is one in a row of volcanoes that are being monitored. Mount St. Helens, Mount Hood, Mount Rainier and Mount Baker.

I am not sure how they know which way the eruption will go if and/when it goes, but they have an evacuation route. We weren’t going in that direction.

The road didn’t start getting hilly until we got closer to the outskirts of Seattle and Burien. We arrived at Ed and Barb’s place around 3:30 pm. We set up the tent so that it could dry out and then got settled in and chatted to Ed and Barb. We went out for dinner to a really nice Thai restaurant. It was really good to have some good Thai food.

Friday June 12, 2015

A lovely ride today. Although when I woke up at 6:00 am I was still tired, I snuggled into my lovely hubby and fell straight back to sleep until 7:55!! We didn’t leave the motel until 10:00 am. The latest we have started in a very long time. We knew we had a relatively short ride to Yelm or McKenna, if the request for a warmshowers host in McKenna was successful.

We found our way out of Centralia and onto the 507 very easily, it was a flat road through farm country. We headed out to Tinonen to find the rail trail to Yelm.

When we got to Tinonen, we stopped in at the gas station for directions to the start of the rail trail.

As usual and for reasons that are beyond us, local councils do not advertise their great rail trails. You have to go in search for the trail-head. It was a great rail-trail, paved for 24 kms all the way into Yelm.

We passed through two Towns and there were directions to restrooms and restaurants if you wanted to come away from the trail.

One of the things we enjoy about being on a rail trail (apart from the peace and quiet) are the various plaques along the way giving you information on the area.

Most of the rail bridges in this area are wooden tressle bridges. There was always lots of lumber to use.

When we arrived in Yelm we headed to the library, to use the internet. No response from our warmshowers host in McKenna, it looked as though we were going to have to cycle another 20 kms to the camp-site. Then our road angel arrived – Sarah – offered us a spot to pitch our tent at her place just outside of Yelm. She has 10 acres and we could use her shower and pitch the tent. We took her up on the offer after we had been to Safeway to get groceries.

Her 10 acre small-holding is only 5 kms from Town and has a very large bull mastiff ‘guarding’ the place. Sasha is a very large, scaredy cat, she has a big woof but barks and runs away at the same time.

Sarah has four cows, two pigs, one horse, chickens, and doves and about 5 acres of woodlot. We had a lovely chat with her after we had showered, she had travelled extensively when she was younger but has been in Yelm Washington for the past 20 years and has lived at her small farm for 10 years.

I was able to check the email and our warmshowers host emailed us at 7:00 pm to say he was home and we could stay with him. He offered to give us a route for the next day, but we had everything planned and were nicely settled in at Sarah’s “farm”.

Tomorrow night we are staying near Seattle with a couple we met in Carpenteria, they had the tear-drop trailer which we really liked.

Thursday June 11, 2015

After breakfast, Art joined us and cycled out with us to Castle Rock. Art knows every stretch of the roads around here including each bump and narrow section to be aware of. He is an avid cyclist and will cycle every day in the summer. Today he rode home a different route a distance of about 40 miles.

We stopped at Vader for lunch and then carried on to Centralia. Vader was a prosperous lumber town at the turn of the 20^th Century. It met with disaster when Weyerhauser bought the mill and immediately closed it down. I guess that company hasn’t changed much in a hundred years. Although it was never proven local residents who now were unemployed bought insurance on their homes and then burned them to the ground.

The next small town we cycled through used to have a very large egg processing plant. Hence the giant egg.

Another rural day.

We couldn’t find a camp site to stay in Centralia, but we did find a Motel 6 advertising a room rate of $49.00, oops add on another $10.00 for the second person room in the and add taxes – total $69.00!!

Wednesday June 10, 2015

It was sad to leave Portland and our new friends, Lauren and David.

The people we met in Portland were very friendly and kind. We followed bike routes all the way out of Portland, it was so safe and easy. We crossed the Hawthorne Bridge and then followed the river route out of downtown Portland and away. We used the Hawthorne Bridge because it has a counter showing the number of cyclists that have crossed that day and up to date this year. We were the 2187 and 2188 cyclist to cross the bridge that morning and it was only 9:15 am.!! To date there has been over 200,000 cyclists cross that bridge.

There are four bicycle friendly bridges in Portland and a couple more that cyclists can use but do not have cycle lanes. Stephen our dinner companion on Sunday night said that there were between 10,000 and 12,000 cyclists cycling to work every day using those.

We had a lovely ride to St. Helens for lunch. The route was primarily farmland with some hilly views thrown in for good measure, it was a nice easy, flat ride.

I knew it was going to be close to 90 kms not including the ride out of Portland and to our hosts house in Longview. It was a long ride for us.

After lunch we called Art, our host for tonight, who was going to cycle out to meet us and show us the way to his home.

We met Art about 15 kms outside of Longview, he told us at this park area there used to be nuclear plant – the pond is probably toxic.

Art chatted as we cycled until we got closer to Longview. He stopped at this lookout point to give us a quick history of Longview – the timber capital of Washington.

You can just make out in this picture the different coloured water. The grey silty colour at the back is that colour because of the run-off from Mount St. Helens.

Mount St. Helens blew its top in 1980 (actually it blew the side of the mountain). They had very little warning that it was going to happen, it was terrifying for them.

He warned us about the bridge that we were about to cross., the Longview Bridge.

Although it had a good shoulder, it was full of debris and sometimes you just had to run over it as a logging truck was right next to you and you could not go into the roadway.

I am so glad Art came out to meet us and also to warn us about the bridge, the shoulder was wide which is better than most of the bridges that we have crossed in Oregon, but the debris was horrendous.

This was the only \”Welcome to Washington\” sign and I couldn\’t climb up the bridge to stand next to it.

We had a great evening with Art chatting about the area and the problems with the local Council. They want to continue with the heavy industry even though it may only add a dozen jobs. Currently, the Council are in negotiations to bring in coal from Wyoming and ship it to China, they want to be the largest shipping port to ship Wyoming coal to China. The port would be close to the current Weyerhauser plant, which could be cut-off 10 times a day when these mile long trains come into the area just below the bridge we crossed.  The bridge is busy enough taking the logs from the Oregon side to the Washington side.  Effectively backing up traffic across the bridge and no access to the Weyerhauser plant in the event of an emergency. Art is not in favour of this idea as not only will it create mayhem in the bridge area it will only create 12 new jobs.

At one point Art said that he knew I had things to do on the computer and although he was enjoying the conversation he would understand if I went to update the blog. As is often the case when we are with warmshowers, it is more important to have human contact, than to spend time updating the blog. I might get a bit behind because of this, but I really enjoy chatting to our warmshowers hosts and getting to know more about the area we are staying and the people we are staying with.

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday June 7, 8 and 9, 2015

As usual with a big city it was difficult to find a warmshowers host. Initially we had asked to stay for Saturday and/or Sunday. We received a response from Laura who could offer us Saturday but not Sunday – she had other cyclists coming in on Sunday. My next bunch of requests I asked for Sunday and/or Monday realizing that their was so much to see in Portland that we would need two full days, the day we arrived (Saturday) would be a travelling day.

David and Lauren responded saying we could stay Sunday and Monday and as long as we needed. I asked if we could have Saturday as well, that would mean that we didn’t have to pack and move. No problem, was David’s response. That was David – no problem. He was such a joy to meet. More about Lauren and David later.

I called Laura and told her we no longer needed her to host us, she immediately offered for us to come over for a meal as she wanted to meet us and also for her newbie touring cyclists to meet us. We accepted her offer for Sunday evening BBQ.

This was what we found all the time with the people in Portland they were incredibly kind and helpful. Todd had tried to find us a place to stay even though, he was on vacation.

The people in Portland are wonderful.

We had a lot to get done in Portland. One of them was to replace our broken down equipment. Our cycling sandals were falling to bits, Ralf’s handle bar bag was no longer waterproof, with zips that no longer closed properly and he resorted to using a Walmart bag to keep it dry, my cycling jersey I bought in Spain was past its use by date. This was going to be an expensive stopover in Portland. However, Portland has hundreds of bike shops ok a slight exaggeration but it has a lot. It also is the headquarters of Keen Sandal (our cycling sandals are Keen’s), Showerspass (our jackets and water reservoir are showerspass), it has a large REI. We were going to damage the credit card in Portland.

On Sunday our plan was to take the bus into downtown and replenish our worn out stuff and then on Monday go to the rose garden and do the tourist stuff.

We had breakfast and chatted to Lauren and David for a while and then headed downtown on the bus, a little later than anticipated.

We wanted to go to the Keen Store, the REI and a couple of bike shops and then head to Laura’s for dinner.

Our Sunday shopping for cycling sandals was not very successful, in fact we were a little disappointed. I managed to buy a new cycling jersey and gloves. Although, we visited three bike shops in the downtown core, they didn’t have what we needed.

I did chat to a lovely young woman who had a great Raleigh bicycle made in Nottingham with one of the old original metal emblems. It even had an old Brooks saddle.

We were heading to the bus stop when I spotted an old car in a warehouse which I knew Ralf would be interested in, the owner invited me in for a chat and Ralf followed. The car I had spotted was an old Cadillac. Ralf asked for permission to take a photo. Unfortunately he said no, they weren’t his cars. He had millions of dollars of cars in this warehouse. He took us around and chatted to us about the cars – Cadillacs, Bentley, porsches, a 1932 French car. It was amazing. This volksy was not in the warehouse.

We were late for dinner but Lauren and Stephen waited for us to arrive. I chatted with Lauren and Stephen about their trips, especially about their trip through Croatia and down to Montenegro, somewhere we want to go. Ralf chatted to the other touring cyclists, (Robyn and Mike) they had flown in from Philadephia and are cycling across the country.

On Sunday we decided to cycle around Portland. Portland is reputed to be the best cycling city in the US. I would totally agree. More on Portland later.

We went to more bike shops and finally got everything we needed. New shoes, new bag and a great experience cycling around Portland.

We had dinner with Lauren and David. David was five when his family escaped from Vietnam. They were on the last helicopters that left Vietnam. Lauren said they had recently watched a documentary which had live footage of the air-lift, they were trying to spot David’s family. David’s father was a colonel in the South Vietnamese army and would not have survived very long under the North Vietnamese regime. Can’t imagine the parents fear of losing a child in the mayhem of getting onto the flight.

We talked about how it was for him to arrive in the US, sponsored by a church group in Minnesota. He said it was traumatic but the what was more traumatic was opening his front door in the winter and seeing snow. What a great sense of humour and an incredible attitude. We talked about the homeless in Portland. David’s opinion was that if you want to find work you can find work. His father instilled in him a strong work ethic, you work for your family.

One of the funny stories Lauren shared was after they had been dating for six years her friends were telling her to give him an ultimatum. She said that David had a plan, but forgot to share it with her. David said I had to have enough money to buy you a house and provide for you, before marrying you.

They were a lovely couple and we really enjoyed staying with them.

Portland:

I have worked with urban planning consultants for 16 years and one of the things I got from working in that environment was how do we make cities livable. I “googled” livability and here is one definition: There are five fundamental aspects of great, livable cities: robust and complete neighborhoods, accessibility and sustainable mobility, a diverse and resilient local economy, vibrant public spaces, and affordability.

In my opinion Portland has the five fundamental aspects – most of the neighbourhoods we cycled through, had independent “downtown” areas with local shops, coffee shops, open spaces, places to meet and easy to get around by walking, public transit, bicycles and cars. The problem, with having such a great city is that more people want to move to it and the housing prices go up – affordability.

This bridge will open in the fall of 2015 and will be the first bridge in Oregon, not to allow motorcars on the bridge.  Light rail, buses, pedestrians and cyclists – (accessibility and sustainable mobility).

This weekend in Portland, was the Rose festival, Fleet week and Dragon boat festival. We missed the Rose Parade, (Saturday), we missed the ships (too busy shopping) ditto with the dragon boats.

There is so much to do in this city, every other week-end throughout the summer. On Monday we visited the Rose Garden and the Japanese Garden.

Portland is known as the Rose City. The Rose Garden has 1,000 plantings with 600 varieties, in a 4.5 acres property, it was established in 1917. Can you imagine how many photos Ralf took!! Here are just a few.

The oldest Rose in the the garden was called the Grand Duchess (1943).  After the blaze of colour of the Rose Garden, we went to the peace and quiet of the Japanese Gardens.

Portland not only has lots of things happening within the City, it is close to the great outdoors, the coast is only an hour a way, the gorge is only an hour away, wineries are only an hour away.

Awesome City. Thank you David and Lauren for allowing us to stay with you so that we could experience your city.

We could live in Portland, maybe get one of these bikes to get around.

Saturday June 6, 2015

Another beautiful day on the bike. We left Steven’s house at 8:30. We knew it was going to be a hot day and needed to negotiate our way around Portland and its myriad of bike paths to find our warmshowers host.

The area around McMinnville and towards Portland has over 400 wineries. A lot of the smaller Towns have capitalized on this and have wine tasting rooms in the Town. I think this has helped revitalize the Towns in this area.

We had planned a route with Steven to get us into Portland. Then we had to find our hosts address, we found it without too much difficulty. We did have one big hill to go up. Although Portland has a grid system a lot of the streets do not run in a straight line, so we had to zig zag our way to SE 66^th.

We arrived at about 1:30 very hot and sticky. David and Lauren were out but had left the key under the mat. We let ourselves in and I decided to clean the bikes before we showered.

I gave the bikes a good clean and then we showered.

We had figured that David and Lauren would be out for the rest of the day as they had left us a note telling us how to turn the TV on if we needed to.

We went for a walk to the local grocery store and bought some wine and salad for dinner. No quiche but we did have the fixings for Tuna Nicoise, very nice on a hot day.

David and Lauren arrived home at about 9:30 pm, we had a quick chat and were in bed at 10:30pm

Friday June 5, 2015

Sometimes you just ride, because it feels good to put your head down and go. Today was one of those days. We knew we had a hill to climb, but when we got to the top, we were both surprised that this was the summit – Murphy Hill Summit 756 feet. It didn’t even feel like much of a climb, and I didn’t think it was worthy of a photograph.

As we headed inland we had a north-westerly wind, we were heading east. The sun was out and it was warm from the outset. By the time we got McMinnville at 1:30 it was 32 degrees C.

We had put sunscreen on for the first time since San Diego before leaving Lincoln City and we were very glad we did.

Highway 18 was described on the Lincoln City Bike Map as a narrow road with low traffic. The road had a good shoulder for the most part and was a busy road, lots of traffic. Most of them gave us plenty of room, even when we had a wide shoulder.

We stopped at a small picnic area and spotted our first Bald Eagle, soaring above us in lazy circles.

The scenery today was a mix of forest and rural farm lands, nothing spectacular, but worthy of singing the Sound of Music songs as we cycled through a green valley.

We stopped at a DQ that was along the highway for a pee break and decided we needed an ice-cream, sometimes the opportunity presents itself and you have to take it.

We arrived in McMinville and had a few hours to kill before meeting our warmshowers host at his house at 5:00.

McMinnville seems to have dozens of wine tasting rooms, along the Main Street of the historic downtown. We decided to have a pub lunch and had some local cider and Ralf had a stout made in the area.

A young man (Joel) stopped to chat about our tour and told us he is planning on going on his own cycle tour starting this November. His route will take him in a counter-clockwise route of the US. Down the Pacific Coast, West to East of the Southern Tour, up the eastern seaboard to Maine and then the TransAm back to Oregon. Good luck Joel – enjoy the ride. He will be taking his pet poodle with him.

After lunch we had a wander up and down the main street where we met Ben Franklin.  A piece of advice first everyone.  When sitting next to a statue on a hot day, check the temperature of the bench – it was very hot.

After burning my legs on Ben\’s bench, we headed to the library and a nice shaded place where I updated the blog.

We called Steven at 5:00 to let him know we were in McMinnville, he was home and told us to come over. When we arrived, dinner was on the stove and we had time to shower and get settled in.

Steven had a major bike accident a couple of years ago, resulting in a plate in his shoulder and a steel rod in his leg. He is back on his bike and looking forward to doing some touring in the future.

We chatted about his family, one of his sons is in Japan and he hopes to go over to see him and maybe do a bike tour with him.

We had a nice wander around his garden and chatted about gardening. Steven was a really nice guy. Later after we had cleared the dinner things away, I was folding the laundry and when I came back Ralf and Steven were chatting about the accordion. Steven’s Dad used to play one and a few years ago Steven decided to learn how to play. He gave us a quick tutorial on how they are played and how complicated they are. Two hands doing completely different things, he also had to control the baffles and concentrate on the melody. What a complicated instrument, but he got our toes tapping and we really enjoyed his enthusiasm for the instrument.

Consequently, we kept him up way past his bedtime and ours. Steven had to get up at 5:00 am and it was past 10:00 pm when we made the move to go to bed.

A lovely evening to top off a great days riding.

Thursday June 4, 2015

A later start this morning, it was a very windy ride. Our first major head wind for quite a while. We were hoping to get to Otis and a campsite, but eventually  we decided to stay at a motel in Lincoln City. Please note the blue skies, that is why we have a headwind!

Ralf, my wonderful husband, took the lead throughout the whole of the ride. I tucked in behind and had a lovely ride.

We were heading up Highway 101 when Ralf stopped and indicated a loop that we could take that would take us away from the Highway for about 6 miles (10ks). I figured it was going to be another hilly ACA alternative, but it wasn’t too bad. A very quiet and scenic road which bought us to Cape Foulweather, named by Captain Cook.

This was one of the best scenic spots we have seen in Oregon. The visitors centre was really nice and I treated myself to some new earrings.

We met a lovely couple who had lived in Toronto, Chicago and now live in Seattle. We swapped stories and addresses and they have offered us a place to stay in Seattle when we get there. The kindness of strangers – what an amazing experience we are having.

The ranger at the visitors centre told us we could use the old highway 101, going against the traffic on a designated pedestrian/cycle-path, it would rejoin the Highway at the bottom of the hill.

This bridge has recently been reconstructed, the original bridge was falling into disrepair.  However, because of the historical significance of the bridge they reconstructed it using new techniques to prevent salt erosion.

One of the funny things we noticed today were the road signs to Lincoln City. We left Newport the sign said 22 miles, only half a mile down the road, the sign said 24 miles, the next sign again only a short distance down the road indicated 19 miles. We had no clue how far Lincoln City was and neither did the transportation department. However, when we came into the area of Lincoln City we realized the confusion. Lincoln City appears be a number of neighbourhoods (Cutler City, Delake, Nelscott, Ocenalake, Taft and Wecoma Beach) collectively called Lincoln City. The first neighbourhood (Cutler City) was at 19 miles the City Hall of Lincoln City is at 22 miles, problem solved.

Apart from the wind it was a lovely day. Tomorrow we head inland, it will be a bit of a longer ride to McMinnville but we have a warmshowers host.

Again we need the internet to send more emails for warmshowers in Portland.  We are staying at the Sea Echo Motel, which used to have a sea view and now only has a partial view.

We were struggling to find a place in Portland, but the last three emails, I sent out all came back positive. Todd was not available to host us, but called friends to try and help us out, how kind is that.

Fortunately we have someone who is willing to host us for Sunday and Monday night and they also have toured New Zealand, and Jasper, Banff and Canada lots to chat about.

Wednesday June 3, 2015

Once again I woke up to the sound of rain, oh well, we are going to get wet today. However, by the time we were ready to leave, it had stopped raining.

Chris lives about 7 kms outside of Florence, in a lovely wooded and lake area.

The bridge going into Florence was a little narrow, but we did manage to cycle across it without incident.

We were hoping to meet up with Christine and her riding partner Jayde today, but didn’t know if we could arrange a place to have coffee or just meet up on the side of the road.

Leaving Florence, the ride was quite hilly and my worst fear was that we would see Christine hurtling down a hill or even worse struggling to get up a hill and no place to stop to chat.

It was a foggy ride for the first half of the ride, and we had a slight headwind.

I thought if it was wet, we were supposed to have a tail-wind.

Apparently, if the sun comes out you get a headwind.

We were really fortunate, we had just passed the seal caves when we spotted Christine, she saw us and we indicated for her to pull in to a small viewpoint.

Jayde followed and we were able to have a good chat with them, safely out of the way of traffic and at the top of a hill. She is doing really well and for the most part enjoying the ride. It was really nice to see her again. Jayde asked about food, we told them about our supplies at Safeway, and the sandwiches we usually buy. I totally forgot that Christine is gluten intolerant, they couldn’t get the deals we get on the sandwiches.

Jayde asked why Ralf has the riding crop on his bike. We both responded (straight faced) that he used it to “encourage” me to get up a hill. Then Ralf added that sometimes it gets a bit kinky in the tent!! After the initial shock we were all laughing.

We stopped in at Yachats and had lunch, a nice sandwich with chocolate milk, kept me going for a while.

We then carried on to Waldport, and stopped in at the Green Bike Co-op.

I surprised the owner by asking him if he was looking forward to going to India. Janet and Stephen were chatting to them when they cycled through and mentioned it on her blog. It was really funny to see the look on his face, we told him he was infamous.

Although Waldport looked like a nice tourist coastal Town, we learned from the Green Bike Co-op that there is 60% of the area youth live in economically disadvantages homes. Green Bike Co-op is a place where youth from the community can learn a valuable trade. Green Bike Co-Op paint bikes green and leave them around the community so that people can use them – similar to the Bike Programs adopted by big cities except these are all free. You can pick up a bike cycle, wherever and then leave it. If you are using a bike there is a yellow rope tied on the bike that indicates it is in use.

From Yachats to Newport the road had a good shoulder and we were quite close to the coastline, it was very pretty.

We had been warned about the Newport Bridge and had decided to walk the bikes over on the side walk.

Ralf went to get supplies and took this great photo of the Bridge.

We are staying in a cheap motel tonight, as we are still trying to get a warmshowers in Portland.  We need the internet to do this. There are hundreds of hosts in Portland but like we have found with most big cities they often do not update their profiles when they are not available. I have sent a dozen requests and five responses – not available. The hostels do not have availability on Saturday, we may be sleeping on a park bench.

Ralf spotted this great quote today:

“Whenever I see someone biking faster than me I assume they are not going as far”

Tuesday June 2, 2015

Woke up to pouring rain. We both lay in bed for about half an hour trying to decide whether to cycle in the rain again. Neither of us enjoy riding in the rain. At about 7:30 we decided to stay an extra day with Chris. Ralf is going to go into Town with Chris and I will update the blog.

Trevor is heading south, and was undecided about continuing on in the rain. He eventually left about 12:30 pm. The rain stopped at about 1:30 and the sun came out at 2:00 pm. We could have cycled today, but tomorrow is supposed to be a nice day.

The extra rest day gave us the opportunity to have a look at the route to Portland, we are making a detour. Portland is supposed to be one of the best cycling cities in the U.S. I want to go and investigate why.

I definitely need some new cycle shoes. My Keen cycling sandals are falling to bits. I had them sewn in Cuba and then last night Ralf put them on the base board heater to dry and almost melted the insoles!

We are hoping to meet up with Christine tomorrow. Christine and Margaret hosted us in Tempe, AZ and now Christine is one her own bike tour of the Pacific Coast.

We had another good evening with Chris, chatting.