Phase II: ???
Saturday, July 28th
We made it!
Finally! Eastern Washington was pretty boring, but riding down the mountain range was fun. After 4 hours of dodging cops (multiple radar blips, POP warnings, and a couple of laser hits!) we rolled past Rainier and down into Seattle! How lovely! Traffic was busy, but not too bad; Brian thought it was bad for a Saturday. But there was some kind of fair going on down by the Space Needle, right where we were staying. Leslie was waiting for us at the hotel; Laurie’s flight got delayed (again!). A little hiccup with getting the rooms (some problem with the reservation system, but Hampton Inns took care of us), and then we had beds and a shower. Cleaned up, walked around the Space Needle, then walked to dinner–sushi, and two bottles of Okinoroshi sake–yum! Met one of Brian’s ex-coworkers, Michael, and his wife Sigal, both from Israel, and had a fun dinner discussing politics and philosophy while getting increasingly intoxicated. What a night! Michael drove us back to our hotel, where we promptly crashed out.
Sunday, July 29th
Sisyphus Heads for Mount Olympus
I slept in today, it felt GREAT! Brian and Laurie didn’t expect I would get up before noon, so I didn’t feel bad waking up at 10:00am. Cleaned up, ate breakfast, and by noon we were headed out for the ferries. Driving down by the Fish Market was a total zoo, and it took probably 30 minutes to go about 2 miles. Took the ferry across to Bainbridge Island
then it was all highway out to Port Angeles. We stopped at the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge for a hike down to the ocean.
We ate dinner at the Crab House in Port Angeles, and stumbled on a sand art contest–pretty cool stuff.
Then we headed to our campground in the Elwah valley and set up next to a gurgling river–neat place! No firewood to be found, but that was fine since we were dog tired. We’ll do more tomorrow!
Monday, July 30th
Camping Near the Ocean
I slept in again–my body is craving it after the hard trip out here. Brian and Laurie got up early to see the tidepools, but sleeping sounded better to me. Then Brian’s iPhone locked up (hehehe) and when connecting it to his PowerBook the computer kept demanding internet access before it could fix it. So Brian and Laurie packed up and headed for Port Angeles to find WiFi access, and we trailed behind them about 30 minutes later. After lunch we rode up to Hurricane Ridge–the clouds hanging on it made me think it was going to be foggy, but by the time we got up there it had all cleared off. We hiked around a couple of trails, wearing most of our gear and carrying all the electronics. I think I’m going to buy that PacSafe tank bag, so I can leave my crap on the bike when hiking.
After seeing some deer and goats, we headed back down and took a ride out to the Mora campground, located in a stretch of the park along the coast. We dropped the girls off to start setting up camp, then headed to a convenience mart we passed on the way in to pick up snacks, beer, and stuff for s’mores. Had a great night by the fire drinking and eating–this is what vacation is all about! Right up until Brian stepped in a hole and sprained his ankle, that is. Immediately a knot swelled up the size of a golf ball, and Brian figured he wasn’t going to be hiking anymore for a few days.
Tuesday, July 31st
Getting Old Sucks
I slept in again–go figure. Not quite as bad as yesterday. Leslie got up early and went for a walk along the beach. After waking, cleaning up and eating breakfast, we headed out to the Hoh Rain Forest in the park. Never seen that much moss before! The trees were cool, and it was nice hanging out by the river, but I expected to be, well, rainier than it was. Or at least foggy.
Anyway, we hiked some nice trails while Brian hung out at the visitor center. Then when putting my riding gear back on, I managed to wrench my back somewhow. I strained it last week during my weightlifting routine–I had gone up on all my weights, and I guess I went up too far, so I stopped working out for the few days before the trip and it was getting better. Then I somehow wrench it, and it began spasming and cramping. I hate getting old. So we took it easy the rest of the night, and I put some chemical cold packs on it. Wasn’t feeling too bad by the time we went to bed, but I’m sure the scotch Brian brought along helped with that! Another nice night eating smores by the fire, and in bed by around midnight.
Wednesday, August 1st
Bye bye, Washington!
I woke up in a lot of pain today. The muscles in my back knotted up during the night, and I woke up every time I rolled over. Getting dressed and packing the campsite was not fun, and took 2-3 times longer than usual. Every time I bent down or picked something up, my back would seize and cramp. After we got our site packed up, we headed into Forks for breakfast. While there, I took full advantage of my Washington license (finally!) and called in a script of muscle relaxers for myself to the local pharmacy. About 30 minutes after taking one, my back finally loosened up enough to ride.
We headed down the Washington coast, stopping in at Ruby Beach. I finally got a taste of life in the Pacific Northwest, as the temps were in the mid-50′s and there was heavy fog coming in off the ocean.
Then we boogied for Oregon. Brian told us there really wouldn’t be anything to see in southern Washington, and he was absolutely right. Booooooring. But he assured us that the Oregon coast was a whole different story, and we had reservations at a B&B in Arch Cape to look forward to–a nice break after several days of camping! We rode across the windy bridges into Astoria, OR, and pulled over to connect with a friend of his from Madison who now lives in Hood River, OR. Scott rides, too, and he and his wife pulled up on their Honda Interceptor. After the meets & greets, we headed down to Ecola State Park for a quick hike and some pics.
As we returned to our bikes, a herd of elk happened by, having dinner and posing for us.
Finally we ate dinner in Cannon Beach (brew pub, of course) and found our B&B. I had read in reviews of this place that the house was beautiful and the food fantastic, but the owner was crazy. They were dead on. Rule after rule, “Coffee is only to be poured in the red mugs, tea in the clear mugs. If you drink decaf, you need to see me in the kitchen for a special mug.” Fortunately, it is my job to deal with crazy people, so I handled her well. At breakfast the next day she called me “charming”. Am I good, or what?? Anyway, while Leslie, Brian and I checked in, the rest of the troupe headed down to the beach to catch the sunset. What with her excessive anal rule-listing and extended check-in, we wound up missing the sunset–good thing Scott got pictures! One final hurrah on the beach and it was off to bed.
Thursday, August 2nd
Riding the Oregon Coast
Totally, completely crazy, and that IS my professional opinion, but our host made a fantastic 3-course breakfast. We small-talked with some of the other guests (worst thing about staying in a B&B), then packed up the gear and headed out–to more parks. Oregon has made about 90% of its shoreline public land, so there were a great deal of beaches to see–so many that we only stopped at a few. After a while, one beach started to look like all the others.
After a morning of beaches, we drove down to Tilamook, OR, home of the Tilamook County Creamer’s Association, for some yummy gourmet cheese and ice cream. The “factory tour” was pretty boring, more a display of their packaging facilities than the actual cheese-making process, but the food was good. A final picture in the parking lot, and Scott had to head back home to go to work.
Shortly thereafter the weather took another turn to fog, misty rain, and upper-50′s temps. We didn’t stop at very many places after that, since we wanted to make decent time to our final campsite at Jessie Honeyman State Park. We did stop for dinner at a quaint little seafood shack called Mo’s; apparently a favorite among the locals. This one was right on the ocean, and we spotted some whales around a rock shoal while gearing up for the last part of our ride.
Unfortunately they didn’t surface for very long, and it was hard to catch them on camera. Then Brian discovered that his left front turn signal was broken in the parking lot. You could see glue reside on the end of the stalk, so we figured that the guy who sold it to him must have broken and glued it at some point and didn’t bother to mention it. Instead he gets to find out on a cross-country trip, when the glue finally fails! Fortunately, I had some 5-minute epoxy and duct tape, and we had it all patched up in about 10 minutes. Not pretty, but ride-able. A short stint later and we were in our campground, but found the wood kiosk closed for the night. Laurie went searching for someone who would sell us spare wood for a fire, but to no avail. So instead she resorted to toasting marshmallows for smores above Brian’s candle-lantern! Clearly a desperate smore-junkie. With beer and scotch to warm us, we called it a night.
Friday, August 3rd
Sand, Wine, and Rush-hour Hell
Slept in again, and had a lazy morning eating breakfast and cleaning up. Leslie couldn’t take a shower due to all the women and girls standing in line–the campground was completely full. She barely made it to the sink to brush her teeth, and came back seething about all the girls and women with curling irons and hair straighteners, and coolers (yes, coolers) full of makeup! Why camp?
We didn’t have much planned for the day, so we hiked out to the Oregon Dunes National Recreation area. The sand was fun to hike in, if difficult to climb the dunes,
but our vision was obscured by the fog again rolling in from the sea–and we were 2 miles inland!
We hung out for a little while, watching the kids go sandboarding down the dunes (and immediately began discussing our next snowboard trip!), when families started heading back to camp–the fog was rolling in fast, and was pretty thick. Laurie was bummed that we didn’t rent sandboards, so thought she could get the same effect by jumping on the dune slope with the idea that she would slide down the hill.
Since that plan didn’t work out very well, she decided to roll down the hill instead, filling her pockets and clothing with sand. At least she had fun!
From here we headed across the Cascades, looking for wineries. We headed to the first one we could find in our GPS, but the GPS apparently took us to the back side of the vineyard, and we weren’t sure we had the right place. So we skipped that one and headed up the road, worried that we wouldn’t be able to find another. Silly us. We were in the Willamette Valley, where you can throw a stick in any direction and find a vineyard. We stopped at LaVelle Wineries and had a tasting, then bought 3 bottles between us. We planned on stopping at several other vineyards on the way to Portland, but traffic was moving slower than we planned, and the hour was getting late, so we decided to just boogey for Portland. Then we hit what I can only describe as the worst traffic jam I have ever experienced. It took us no less than 90 minutes to cross a distance of about 20 miles, due to construction, accidents, and dipshit drivers. And it wasn’t just our interstate–every highway we passed under or over was just as jammed. Leslie said it was the perfect ending to her trip–by the time we hit the hotel, she wanted to go home. A good experience to teach me that I never, ever want to live in Portland. Scott had told us traffic in Portland was bad, but I had no idea. We finally got checked into our hotel around 7:00pm, and decided to just order in pizza–we had wine to drink! We bummed in the hotel and crashed out early. I took advantage of the WiFi to upload all our pictures thus far; you can view them on my Flickr account.
Leslie’s flight flew out on Saturday at 7:45am, so she was out of the hotel by 6:15. Laurie flew out shortly thereafter, so from here on out its just us boys! I’m really looking forward to this last bit–I have a whole week to get home, driving through some of the twistiest, scenic roads in the country!