Jan, Anya, and Liya’s Bike Shakedown Trip, day 1: Canadian border to Burlington. Before Jan and Anya leave on their upcoming bike trip from Seattle to Stanford, Jan thought it would be good to do a shakedown trip to make sure everything (gear, bodies) is ready for the trip. Liya was up for joining in on the shakedown trip as well.
The plan is to start at the Peach Arch Historical State Park at the U.S./Canada border and bike back to our house — a distance of 135 miles — over three days.
Angela and Jan load the bikes on the bike rack after breakfast, and we’re on the road around 9:00. Evrim comes with us as well. Anya is very sleepy, having gotten insufficient sleep the previous night, and so she goes to sleep.
We get to the Peach Arch park a little after 11:00, and walk over to take some pictures by the arch at the border. The entire border crossing is eerily quiet, as it’s still closed to all non-essential travel.
Although the forecast calls for scattered rain over the next few days, we’re happy that the sun is out. Jan’s especially glad we’re not setting out in the rain. We tell Angela and Evrim we’ll see them in two days, then start pedaling.
The first part of the ride is along a frontage road alongside I-5, before cutting west through farmland. The terrain is, mercifully, mostly flat. Nevertheless, Anya’s moving slowly, especially up the occasional hills. Jan and Liya decide that it’s better if she rides in front so we don’t get separated.
We stop for a pretty good lunch at a Mexican restaurant in Ferndale, then continue south to Bellingham. After Bellingham, the route follows pretty Chuckanut Drive, which winds along steep hillsides covered with cedars and madronas rising above Puget Sound. We stop to rest at an overlook, where we snack on the ripe blackberries by the roadside.
The winding road finally comes back down to flat farmland above Edison. (Jan actually hiked along this road back in March; it’s part of the Pacific Northwest Trail.) We pass a field full of cattle — which turn out to be bison! Some of the bison have small bison calves with them. By 4:00 in the afternoon, Anya’s flagging and stops for another snack break. The final miles go by slowly, and we reach our hotel in Burlington around 5:30.
Anya’s so tired that she’s pretty sure she’ll sleep through dinner if we don’t eat right away, so we clean up a bit and walk across the parking lot to a burger restaurant. Anya perks up a bit after eating. For their part, Liya and Jan feel pretty good after having biked 46 miles today.
Back at the hotel, we take advantage of the hotel’s pool and hot tub, then collapse in our rooms. As Anya’s going through her pannier bags, she discovers that she’s accidentally packed many books for the 2-night trip. She explains that, as she was packing, she kept thinking that she should bring something to read. She’d toss a book in one of her bags, then forget that she’d done that, and later throw another book in. She’s ended up with five fairly heavy books, including three on the French Revolution.
Bike shakedown trip, day 2: Burlington to Lake Stevens. It’s drizzling when we wake up; we’re not going to escape getting rained on today. Liya and Jan have breakfast in the hotel restaurant, then Jan gets coffee from a stand nearby for himself and to wake up Anya. Anya drags herself out of bed after having slept on and off for 13 hours. Before leaving the hotel area, she gets snacks from a gas station as breakfast.
The first part of the day parallels I-5, so is loud, not pretty, and has a fair amount of traffic. After crossing the Skagit River, we turn east and the riding is nicer. It’s not raining (yet), but there are low clouds hanging over the valley floor and running up the hills.
When we reach the Big Lake area, we want to stop for a restroom break, and finally come to the Big Lake Bar & Grill. It’s about to open for lunch, so we hang around until they open up. The owner/bartender is very friendly, and chats with us as we share a token Sprite drink to qualify as customers.
The road we’re on winds through forest. It’s not bad, but we’re very happy when we reach the north end of the Centennial Trail, a dedicated pedestrian/cyclist/equestrian trail. The converted railway bed is nearly flat, and we can zoom along at a good clip without worrying about passing cars and trucks.
When we reach Arlington, we stop for lunch at Stilly’s Diner. It’s very popular, so there’s a bit of a wait, but the food is good, and it’s nice to sit down.
We rejoin the Centennial Trail, and it begins to drizzle. In response, the area’s slugs all decide that now’s a good time to cross the bike path — we have to constantly weave to avoid hitting slugs. Jan dubs this the Slugtennial Trail.
Around 3:00, the drizzle builds to light rain, and finally to a downpour. The heavy rain only lasts for 30 minutes, but that’s long enough to soak all of us through our raingear. By the time we reach our B&B for the night in Lake Stevens, we’re very happy to be able to get inside and dry off.
The Mansion Inn B&B is a quirky house that seems to have been built by an architect with an overfondness for dormer windows — the rooftop is covered with them. The owners, Rod and Tracy, welcome us inside, help us get our bikes stored in the garage, and show us to our rooms. Everyone peels off their soggy, grit-covered biking gear and takes a shower or hot bath.
Jan’s the only person who’s brought a spare pair of shoes. Liya’s clever enough to dry her wet shoes with her room’s hair dryer, but Anya’s shoes are still soaking, so she doesn’t want to walk to dinner. After struggling with a local pizzeria’s web site, we finally order a pizza and 3 sodas. 50 minutes later, the pizza shows up — along with three 2-liter bottles of soda. We donate two of the bottles to the B&B.
Bike shakedown trip, day 3: Lake Stevens to home. It rains all night, but thankfully the rain stops by morning. We have breakfast at the B&B, then set out along the side of Lake Stevens on our way back to the Centennial Trail. It’s a pleasant morning ride all the way to the trail’s end in the small town of Snohomish. There we cut west across wide valley farms.
Eventually we reach the end of the plain at the base of a ridge. Jan had noticed earlier that the next road is called “Seattle Hill Road”, and he’s learned from personal experience that any road with “Hill” in its name is going to be a big hill. Seattle Hill Road is no exception. We begin slowly grinding up the hill.
We eventually crest the ridge to find ourselves entering suburbia, and begin following a wide, busy road through endless strip malls, office parks, and housing developments. We’re happy when we finally reach the small and twisty North Creek Trail and can get away from traffic.
Anya’s eager to get back to Seattle — she has a middle school reunion this afternoon that she wants to attend. When Jan and Liya stop for a snack, Anya says she’s going to keep going so she can make her reunion in time. Five minutes later, Liya exclaims, “Anya’s coming back!” Anya’s phone has died, so she has no way to navigate. She rides with Jan and Liya again for a short while through the town of Bothell. When Jan and Liya decide they’re going to stop at a Starbucks to use the restroom, Anya checks Jan’s phone map, and decides the route from this point is simple enough that she can manage it. She pedals off.
A short while later, Jan and Liya reach the Sammamish River Trail, which is the beginning of familiar home territory for Jan. Some minutes later, they reach the Burke-Gilman Trail, which is familiar to Liya as well. From this point it’s a quick run down the northwest side of Lake Washington. We stop at University Village for lunch at Din Tai Fung. The rest is a short ride back across the Montlake Cut, through the Arboretum, and over the hill to Madison Park and our house.
Anya learns that she’s been accepted into Stanford’s Structured Liberal Education (SLE) program. The program “emphasizes artists and intellectuals who introduced new ways of thinking and new ways of creating to the world that have often overthrown or deeply changed tradition”. The 60-odd freshmen in the program will live together in the same dorm, so she’ll see a lot of her classmates.
Bree’s developing a reputation in our household for barbs and zingers. On a related note, tonight at dinner someone mentions a restaurant called “Roasting Water”. Angela points out, “You can’t roast water.” Bree: “Sure you can.” She looks at her glass of water: “Yo mama is so fat…”
Jan and Anya set out to bike from our home in Seattle to Stanford University for the start of Anya’s freshman year.
Day 1: Home to Shelton, WA. After a few weeks of many preparations, the first day goes by more or less as planned. We roll the bikes out of the garage around 10 am, and say goodbye to everyone. The first part of the day is biking to the ferry terminal downtown, where we catch the ferry to Bremerton. It’s a warm day, but not punishingly hot, and not too smoky.
At Bremerton, we’re met by Anya’s friend, Ivy, who herself is leaving for college in a few days. Ivy has picked up lunch for us, and we eat it at a table looking out over the Bremerton waterfront. Ivy gives Anya a little handmade paper flag to fly that says “PEDAL”.
The road out of Bremerton is a busy, loud highway, which we’re glad to get off of. We eventually connect to a scenic road along the Hood Canal. The turn-off from there is an extremely steep hill; we’re eventually forced to walk our bikes past the steepest part.
Since we’re not in a rush, when we reach the county park at Mason Lake, we stop to take a swim. We chat with a nice couple who asks us about our ride. There’s no beach per se to swim from — the park is mostly a boat launch — but we go swimming off the boat dock.
From the park, we follow a pretty, rolling road along the north shore of Mason Lake. The lake is thin but is surprisingly long. Leaving the lake behind, we follow roads through timber plantations and meadows, eventually reaching the outskirts of Shelton, WA.
Our lodging tonight is at the humble Shelton Inn motel, run by a man who doesn’t speak English well but is extremely nice. We go out in search of dinner, and strike out at a couple of places before getting decent street tacos at a Mexican restaurant.
Bike to school, day 2: Shelton, WA to Lake Sylvia State Park
We have breakfast at the motel’s diner before leaving Shelton, then stop at the little drive-thru espresso shack next door. We’re not sure if it’s open, then someone opens the little window. The poor young woman barista inside is wearing a string bikini (a job requirement, presumably) on a cold day, so she’d had the window closed for warmth.
We get our first taste of Highway 101, which we’ll be following for all of Oregon and Northern California. It’s busy and slightly terrifying.
When we enter the town of McCleary (“Home of the Bear Festival”), we stop at a Dollar General so Anya can pick up some things. Our plan is to eat at a sub shop in town, but the shop seems to be closed. Everyone in the area is focused on another business that’s running a roadside tag team wrestling tournament. The staged wrestling antics look even sillier than the ones on TV. We end up settling for Mexican for lunch because the only other food option Google Maps came up with was the Shell station.
We pass by farms, behind which loom a pair of eerie cooling towers. Along that stretch, Anya gets her first flat tire of the trip, which we stop to replace.
We’re very close to the state park where we’re going to camp tonight, when we realize the road into the park is up a long hill. We’re happy to get into camp, set up our tent, then take advantage of the park’s hot showers. We make a dinner of backpacker pasta and skillet bread.
Bike to school, day 3: Lake Sylvia State Park to South Bend, WA
I awake at 5:00 am to the start of light rain, leaping out of the tent to make sure everything is under cover. We bike through the drizzle into Montesano to have breakfast at the Fishin’ Hole.
The morning ride is a long slog on Highway 101 through timber farms: green, but not really pretty. We reach the logging town of Raymond on the Willapa River, where the Kountry Kitchen restaurant is still serving lunch.
We don’t want the ride to become an undifferentiated cycle of sleep-bike-sleep, so we want to try to see something of interest each day. A search of the town turns up the Northwest Carriage Museum just a minute away. The museum turns out to be an absolutely fantastic collection of restored horse-drawn carriages. The exhibits include period costumes, interesting plaques, and film clips showing the famous movies (e.g. Gone with the Wind) in which the carriages have appeared.
It’s raining when we leave the museum, so decide to abandon tonight’s plan to camp in a county park. A call to the Seaquest Motel in the small town of South Bend ahead reveals that they have a single room left, which we’re more than happy to take. We’re surprised to find that the 30 minute ride to South Bend follows a small bike trail, which compensates somewhat for the increasingly heavy rain. By the time we reach the motel, we’re soaked.
South Bend turns out to be so small that there are essentially no dinner options. The one restaurant listed as open turns out to be closed. Happily, the small German deli near it — which is supposed to be closed — still has its door open. The owner, a nice woman named Joelle, says she can make panini sandwiches for us. She’s chatty, and is interested in hearing about our trip as she putters around her kitchen.
Bike to school, day 4: South Bend, WA to Astoria, OR
While getting breakfast at Elixir Coffee, the barista warns us against biking over the upcoming Astoria Bridge: it’s 4 miles long, extremely narrow, and has a steep 200’ climb to get over the big hump at the south end. She strongly recommends taking our bikes on a bus over the bridge instead.
Before leaving town, we poke our heads into the surprisingly opulent Pacific County Courthouse up the street from our little motel. It has a beautiful stained-glass dome over the main atrium.
Google’s suggested bike route out of South Bend takes us down a country road. After biking for a mile or so, we encounter an ominous “Pavement Ends” sign, and a short while later the road turns to gravel. The road is steep and twisty, and it’s quite hard to make progress. Rather than fight the road for 4 more miles, we concede defeat and turn back to town to take the long way around on smooth, flat Highway 101.
Although the highway route is longer, it comes with nice views of the Willapa River estuary. We have lunch by a small river emptying into a Willapa Bay.
At 2:00, we reach the Rocket Diner in Naselle where, in theory, we can pick up the bus over the Astoria Bridge. The only afternoon bus is at 5:00 and, sadly, the diner where we’d planned to wait turns out to have been closed for the past few years. The town of Naselle doesn’t seem to have much beyond a gas station and a high school, so we’re surprised when we’re panning around the map and see that it has a public library. The little Naselle Library is a charming building with free wifi and comfy chairs, and the staff says we’re free to wait there as long as we’d like.
Returning to the bus stop, we’re happy when the bus arrives on schedule. When the bus reaches the Columbia River and begins driving over the narrow Astoria Bridge, we decide we made the safe choice in opting for the bus. As luck would have it, the bus’ one stop in Astoria is right next to our riverfront hotel.
The hotel has a small restaurant that smells good, so we have dinner there. The food’s quite good, but there’s not enough on the menu that Anya finds appealing, so later we go out for a second dinner.
In the evening, we can hear waves slapping against the pilings holding up the pier on which the hotel sits.
Bike to school, day 5: Rest day in Astoria, OR
I’m awakened by early morning barking outside the window, but it’s not dogs — it’s sea lions.
Anya and I go to the restaurant called “Coffee OR Waffle”, where we get both. While the waffles are good, the coffee isn’t, necessitating a stop at Godfather’s for better coffee. After breakfast I head off to a laundromat so that, instead of washing clothes in sinks, we can have genuinely clean clothes.
The rear brake on Anya’s bike has been squeaking, and happily there’s a great little bike shop next to the hotel. They fix the brake issue, and while fixing that, they notice and fix a completely different problem with her rear tire.
We have lunch at a so-so seafood restaurant, followed by a visit to the Columbia River Maritime Museum. The museum has some good exhibits that generally convey the point that the mouth of the Columbia River is an exceptionally dangerous place that gobbles up ships. The museum is also exhibiting a collection of WWII “yosegaki hinomaru” memento flags taken by American soldiers off the bodies of Japanese soldiers. A local charity now works to repatriate such flags to the surviving families of the Japanese soldiers.
We have dinner at an Indian restaurant with good food, but it takes an hour to arrive.
Bike to school, day 6: Astoria, OR to Rockaway Beach
We roll our bikes out of the hotel to start our longest day yet — then Anya discovers that her rear tire is flat again, so we stop again at the bike shop next door. An employee asks: “Do you want a regular tube or a puncture-proof tube?”, which sounds like a trick question.
Our morning ride is through intermittent drizzle past Fort Clatsop, then through farms, then boring forest. We finally reach the touristy town of Seaside, OR, which bills itself as a beach down but, according to brother-in-law Jared, always has inclement weather. Anya takes advantage of the shops to buy a better (or at least warmer) rain jacket.
We slog down on Highway 101 to Cannon Beach, home to famously picturesque Haystack Rock. We stop to eat snacks and hang out for a bit on the popular beach.
South of Cannon Beach, the highway becomes hillier and twistier, finally entering a Tunnel of Terror that freaks us both out: it’s very narrow, dark, and loud.
Whebn we reach the peak of the road in Oswald West State Park, we can see a spot of sunlight hitting a beach south of us — the first sun we’ve seen all day.
We coast downhill for several miles to Nehalem, and eventually arrive at our AirBnB cottage in Rockaway Beach. We’re quite tired, and don’t want to walk very far, but we’re starting to appreciate the devastation that COVID has caused in these small towns. Although Google lists several restaurants at this end of town, they’re all closed. We settle for microwaved frozen food from the grocery.
Liya and her friend Katherine swim 1.45 miles across Lake Washington. A few months ago, Liya thought this would be a fun challenge, and Katherine agreed to do it with her, and Katherine’s parents, Marc and Megan, sign up as boat escorts. Leading up to today, the girls do a number of training swims to build endurance and confidence they could make it across.
This morning, Liya walks from our house down to the Madison Park dock, where she meets Katherine and Marc. Marc ferries them in a zodiac across to the eastern side of the lake. Meanwhile, Megan paddles a kayak across the lake to meet them.
It’s quite windy today, so the lake is choppy. However, Liya’s leaving Seattle tomorrow, so this is the last chance they have to do the swim. They decide to swim on the leeward, northern side of the 520 bridge where the water is calmer. Since they won’t be starting and finishing at the beaches they’d scoped out, the girls decide to use the “sentinel” towers at either end of the 520 bridge as the starting and finishing points.
They attach orange swim buoys for safety, then enter the water, with Marc and Megan following behind. Liya says that the swim goes fairly smoothly, with somewhat less effort than she’d expected. When they finally reach the western sentinel tower, they climb back aboard the zodiac, and Marc ferries them back to Madison Park Beach.
Liya and Katherine hop back into the lake and swim to the beach where Angela, Evrim, and Katherine’s sister, Kaila, are there to greet them.
Liya leaves home to begin her freshman year at Yale. Angela accompanies her on her trip to the East Coast.
Bike to school, day 7: Rockaway Beach, OR to Pacific City
We walk up the highway a bit to the Beach Bakeshop, which makes a mean cherry turnover, then walke back along the beach to the cottage. It’s misty almost every morning along the coast.
As we’re getting on our bikes, there’s a bunch of noise coming in our direction — we’re stunned to see an old locomotive come into view up the train tracks that we’d assumed were abandoned.
Our morning pedaling brings us to the Tillamook Creamery, a.k.a the Temple of Industrial Cheese. We make the short self-guided tour, and are both amazed at a video of an automated milking droid. Lunch from their cafeteria features cheese and fried curds, then we buy more snacks at the gift shop. Our food bag is now so full of snacks it’s getting hard to close.
The weather forecast includes rain later today, so we switch from our plan to camp in an RV park and find a motel that had a cancellation.
Halfway through afternoon, we’re very happy to have a respite from busy traffic on Highway 101, and follow a scenic side road to Pacific City. The sun finally comes out! Yay, sun.
We’re not far from Salem, where my sister Skye lives with her husband Jared and their sons Leif and Auden. They all graciously drive out to the coast to meet us for dinner at Pelican Brewing. The restaurant sits on a beach that has an enormous sand dune at its north end, so after dinner we walk up the dune and then run back down.
After dinner, Skye and Jared squeeze everyone into their hatchback so they can drive us back to our motel. Leif is extremely excited to be allowed to ride in the back of the car for the short trip.
Bike to school, day 8: Pacific City, OR to Beverly Beach State Park
It’s foggy and drizzling again as we walk to the local bakery and coffee shop. This morning we opt to follow the recommended cycling route south of here, which is longer and hillier than Highway 101, but much quieter. We’re pedaling through drippy old growth forest when the sun comes out, and the weather is finally clear and warm by the time we’ve finished our lunch at a Lincoln City diner.
We’re stopping for dinner groceries at an IGA when we see a glassblowing studio next door, so we watch them work for a bit.
Entering Depoe Bay, we see images of whales everywhere: whales on motel signs, whale t-shirts in shop windows, etc. — and dang if there isn’t a group of people on the town promenade pointing at the bay, where a real whale is spouting.
Highway 101 isn’t especially fun. It’s quite busy with logging trucks and gigantic Class A RVs, although to be fair the logging truck operators are generally considerate about giving us a wide berth. The road conditions vary. At best, the riding is acceptable in places where there’s an ample, bare shoulder to ride on. In worse places, the shoulder is narrow, or covered in gravel or a sparkly coating of broken glass. The worst stretches of the road have no shoulder at all, and we have to share the road with the traffic.
But in this part of Oregon the scenery from the highway is amazing: sea stacks, steep cliffs, and windswept cypresses. As we zoom past one view of the ocean, Anya pulls over: “There are seals!” There are indeed a bunch of seals sunning on a rock below us. They flop clumsily around on the rock, and sometimes a little wave knocks them around.
We get a break from 101 along Otter Loop Road, which is particularly scenic, and it’s all the nicer to be able to enjoy the sun. We reach Beverly Beach State Park, which has easily the biggest state park campground I’ve ever seen.
I attempt to cook a kind of carne asada street tacos for dinner, something that’s a bit challenging in our tiny skillet. After dinner, we go down to the beach to read and watch the sun set over the Pacific.
Bike to school, day 9: Beverly Beach State Park, OR to Carl Washburne State Park
Since it rained overnight, I try hanging wet laundry over rear panniers (by the day’s end, it’s worked like a charm). We’re finally ready to set out when I discover flat tire #3 of the trip. Since it’s probably a slow leak, we just pump it up and pedal to a coffee shack so we can fix the flat there while enjoying lattes.
Today’s touristy stop is at the Ocean Coast Aquarium in Newport. Both Anya and I enjoy watching the sea otters play/wrestle, but best thing at the aquarium is actually an exhibit of the amazing and informative fossil artwork of Ray Troll.
Lunch at a highwayside tamale shack is great, but not enough volume, so we have a second lunch at Subway. We also pick up groceries for dinner in Yachats.
A photographer friend has sent us a list of particularly scenic points to check out, and this stretch of road contains two such points: Devil’s Churn, which is okay, and Thor’s Well, which is amazing and completely mesmerizing — we could have watched for hours. While walking near the Well, a big wave hits nearby in just such a way that I get doused.
Our stop for the night is at Carl Washburne State Park, nestled in a beautiful cypress forest. We turn a so-so prefab pasta meal into a tasty firestorm with the addition of “Trinidad Scorpion” hot sauce we bought today.
At sunset, Anya says she’s going down to read on the beach, but when I get there, I can’t find her. I do see several groups of people — then notice someone in an oddly puffy orange coat. It takes a while to realize that it’s Anya wearing her sleeping bag like a big orange burqa.
Liya moves into Davenport College at Yale University. She’ll be sharing a room with a woman from Jamaica named Zara, and the room is part of a suite they’ll share with three other women.
Bike to school, day 10: Carl Washburne State Park, OR to Reedsport
Anya’s reading something on her phone before we pack up camp, when a little bird flies down and lands right on the phone; Anya’s yelps “Ack!” and the bird takes off.
There are no businesses in this stretch of Oregon’s coastline; we pedal for 1.5 hours to reach the first place we can get our morning coffee.
Stopping for lunch in Florence, OR, we’re absolutely delighted to discover that the town has an Exploding Whale Memorial Park dedicated to the famous incident from 1970. (You can look for it on YouTube or Google.) The nice little park sadly has no plaque about the whale, but from the park we can see across to some enormous sand dunes, so we bike across the river and go for a hike on those dunes. The dunes are awesome.
We make our way to the small town of Reedsport.
Bike to school, day 11: Reedsport, OR to Bandon
We have a long day today, so after a visit to a coffee shack and a Safeway, we’re on the road by 9:30 — early for us.
Halfway to North Bend, we stop at a campground to use their portable toilets. As we pull up, a service contractor is power-washing the insides of the toilets, so we wait for a bit and get to use the most immaculate portable toilets ever.
Anya wants to listen to music (one ear only) but her headphones are dead; I try giving her one of my earbuds, which kind of works but requires that we ride very closely together so she stays in range.
The huge McCullough Memorial Bridge into North Bend looks too narrow for comfort, so we walk our bikes across the very high and very long bridge.
We have Mexican food for lunch in Coos Bay. We’re too focused on miles today to do any touristy stuff — we just want to get to the end. South of Coos Bay, Seven Devils Road turns out to be steep, twisty, and just keeps going up and up and up. We’re nearly to the downhill section when I get flat tire #4 of the trip.
We finally reach our rental cottage in Bandon, which turns out to be a mile from the town center. We can’t find any restaurant that will deliver, and most of the options don’t look appealing, so we end up at a Dairy Queen. They only do drive-thru or curbside pickup, so we order through their silly mobile app and then stand in the curbside pickup parking space.
Bike to school, day 12: Rest day in Bandon, OR
We spend the morning doing laundry and other chores, then walk into town for lunch at Tony’s Crabshack, which isn’t bad, but does not appear to have any crab.
We stop at a bike shop to pick up inner tubes, decide to also try bike tire inserts that make tube punctures less likely; the shoulders of Highway 101 are often liberally covered in sparkly bits of broken glass.
Anya sees a spotted towhee, and has heard they respond well to “pishing” (making a “psh” sound), so we try that, and it seems to work — the towhee gets a little closer, and makes a call.
Anya’s original plan for this bike trip had been to spend virtually every night camping in state parks, so when I took over the itinerary, I booked sites at state parks whenever that was possible — but based on our experience thus far, Anya doesn’t actually enjoy bike camping. I spend a chunk of the afternoon online, replacing most of the remaining campground plans with other arrangements.
Last night we were excited to see that a pizza restaurant that delivers will be open tonight — but when we call them, they won’t actually deliver, so we’ll have to walk a mile to pick it up. Although the pizzeria tells us it’ll be a 1.5 hour wait for the pizza, after 30 minutes they call and tell us the pizza’s already done. We’d wanted to avoid getting on the bikes today, but we bike over so we can get the pizza while it’s still hot.
Anya writes a sestina poem about the trip:
How to get to San Fransisco from Seattle on a bicycle:
Start where your driveway meets the road
From there it is a matter of following the coast.
Although there are some hills, the 101 is mostly flat
Enjoy the smell of the ocean breeze, tinged with salt
And when it’s lunch, don’t forget to stop for a taco:
Half an hour of pedaling is fueled by a single taco.
With proper nutrition, you can achieve fifty miles per day on a bicycle
The electrolytes in Gatorade will replenish your body’s salts
Remember to pack enough food and snacks for the road
Enjoy diner pancakes for dinner even if the soda is flat
Check out the unique seafood restaurants along the Pacific coast.
What to bring? Remember the weather is wet on the coast
Pack light: your belongings must be stuffed in paneers like a taco
Definitely bring extra tire irons in case of a flat
And a patch kit. Two outfits is enough; you can cycle
Through them every other day on the road
And wash them in the sink, to remove the sweat and salt
As for your route, take the online maps with a grain of salt
Although Google has charted highways coast to coast
It is not always pleasant to share the road
With racing trucks and cars bound to crush you like a taco
Breaking the speedometer, they speed by in an endless cycle
Alongside a shoulder littered with roadkill squished flat.
Therefore, the advice meant for vehicles falls somewhat flat.
But the American Cycling Association is worth its salt
They have an official route meant for bicycles
Which winds through the countryside; when the coast
is clear, take a left and speed past grass fields golden as a taco
shell, past farmhouses and spotted horses visible from the road.
It won’t often be easy, of course. Prepare for bumps in the road:
Prepare for the sudden rainstorms and the tires that are flat.
Prepare for your butt to feel like a folded taco
After pumping up a large hill, your lips will taste like salt
But once you ascend, gravity overtakes you, and you’ll coast
Down to the bottom, gaining momentum, completing the cycle
Now it’s time to hit the road! May you have an adventure as delicious as sea salt
The journey takes four weeks flat, four weeks to admire the windswept beauty of the coast
Take copious photos to bundle up your memories like a taco; the scenery, as you pedal, curling into a meditative cycle
Bike to school, day 13: Bandon, OR to Port Orford
This is the first day that’s started out sunny and warm instead of fog that burns off. We have some hard/long biking days coming up, but today (and tomorrow) is going to be so short that Anya declares it a Cheat Day.
We’ve reached a section of Oregon’s south coast where civilization is spread pretty thin. There’s exactly one tourist activity in this stretch, which we stop to look at: a wildlife park and petting zoo. Highlights: capybaras, goat kids, and crazy-looking four-horned sheep. There’s exactly one restaurant in this stretch, which we stop to eat at: a decent Japanese restaurant.
Our motel for the night turns out to be on the far side of town, so we have to walk a long way to get to food. Anya’s lost her sleep mask, so we walk all the way to the Dollar General to get one. They have exactly one, which we purchase: a sparkly purple koala mask.
One of the two restaurants in town is an upscale place with a patio overlooking the beach. It has good food, but the deck is pretty windy. By the time we get back to the motel, Anya somehow has lost the new sparkly purple koala sleep mask.
A truck parked at the motel says “A and D Bees” on the cab, and on its flatbed there’s a box full of bees with a cloud of bees buzzing around it. By evening the bees have quieted down. Our best guess is that the beekeeper does their driving in the early morning hours when it’s still too cold for the bees to want to leave the box. (When we get up in the morning, the truck is indeed gone.)
Bike to school, day 14: Port Orford, OR to Gold Beach
We engage in more post-COVID-apocolypse hunting for breakfast: the first restaurant is closed indefinitely, the second is closed Fridays (i.e., today), and the third is on vacation. So the lucky winners of our breakfast dollars are the Battle Rock Coffee drive-thru and the Circle K convenience store. Since there are no restaurants along the route today, we buy lunch from the Circle K as well.
This is the second of two low-mileage Cheat Days. Today’s stop is at a tourist trap called Prehistoric Gardens: scale models of dinosaurs in a forest setting. We think this is pretty cool — on balance, it’s more compelling to see fake dinosaur models in a lush natural setting (with plenty of ferns, etc., for that Jurassic Park look) than it is to see real dinosaur skeletons in a giant, sterile exhibit hall.
To break up the afternoon leg, we stop for a reading break at Ophir Beach until the windswept sand drives us back to the bikes.
Although the town of Gold Beach is pretty big, we can’t find a restaurant nearby that’s open and has a table, and end up having to settle for mediocre barbecue. When the sun sets, the hotel puts on a “light show”, which turns out to be a movie about the area’s attractions on an outdoor screen while colored lights shine on nearby trees.
Happy Birthday, Liya! Liya is now 18.
Bike to school, day 15: Gold Beach, OR to Crescent City, CA
This will likely be our longest mileage day, so we make an effort to get on the road earlier than usual.
On the way into the town of Brookings, we stop at Dollar General so we can make another attempt to buy Anya a sleep mask from their snazzy product line — she picks the rainbow panda. A short while later, we stop for Brazilian coxinhas (croquettes) at Tropicalia; they’re great.
As we cross the Winchuck River, Anya suggests stopping to dip our feet in the river. This is a great idea. Refreshed, we get back on the bikes and after a minute come to a sign welcoming us to California.
Our afternoon route takes us onto country roads through farms — nice and flat, but we also encounter our first non-trivial headwind. Crescent City isn’t much to look at, but at least has a good, open Mexican restaurant within walking distance of our hotel.
Bike to school, day 16: Crescent City, CA to Orick
Heading out of town, the road turns inland for the next two days. We make the astonishing discovery that, due to prolonged tectonic activity in the distant past, the interior of California is not flat.
We spend a couple of hours slogging to the top of a giant hill in Del Norte State Park. On the plus side, the giant hill has some giant redwood trees to look at.
We’re pretty tired by the time we reach a restaurant at 1:00 for lunch, and we’ve barely come a third of today’s distance. After lunch, we stop at “Trees of Mystery”, a tourist trap focused on redwood trees. In front, it has giant statues of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox. I’m a sucker for rope bridges high up in trees, and these do not disappoint. We also take a gondola to the top, but the bridges are more fun. The best part of Trees of Mystery is probably the most overlooked: an expansive museum of Native American art hidden through the gift shop. We wish we could spend an hour there, but we have miles to go before we sleep.
We almost miss our chance to get snacks in Klamath before we realize that the gas station mini mart is the town’s business district.
The afternoon brings another giant hill into Prairie Creek Redwood State Park that takes us forever to climb. Our reward for making the climb is spending a long time coasting down through an absolutely incredible redwood forest — mile after mile of mind-bogglingly big trees in soft light. We come to the park’s Elk Prairie area, which is, in fact, a prairie full of elk.
Our goal for today is the tiny town of Orick, the only settlement in this stretch of highway. It has no hotels but miraculously had an AirBnB farmhouse available. When we get to the farmhouse address, there are a handful of farmhouses set back from the road, none of which have visible house numbers. I’m relieved to spot a name from the AirBnB on one of the outbuildings of one place, which turns out to be the farmhouse we’re looking for.
The only groceries in town are available at a liquor store — we buy upscale mac and cheese, which turns out to be pretty good. (We’re also starving.)
Bike to school, day 17: Orick, CA to Eureka, CA
We mount our bikes and ride for maybe 30 seconds before crossing a bridge over a river. Anya exclaims, “Otters!” We see three adorable, sleek otters in the river. They hide under some bushes — maybe that’s all we’ll see. Then the otters run across a long gravel bar and jump into the main channel of the river and swim away.
The town’s sole source of coffee is a gas station with a “cappuccino” machine with a “latte” button. Anya makes a “latte” then tries it, then I try it. It’s… not good. We both think “It couldn’t have been that bad”, and both try it again, but it really is that bad. Anya dubs it “the Coffee of Despair”.
We pedal past a series of big lagoons, then go through a series of PUDs (pointless ups and downs).
A fairly common highway sign shows a bicycle and the text “Share the Road” or “Bikes on Roadway”. These messages sound friendly but portend grave danger. What the signs mean is that the shoulder on which we ride our bikes is about to disappear for a stretch, often across a bridge or around a sharp turn, forcing us to “share” the highway’s single lane with speeding trucks. More apt sign text: “Cyclists: Kiss your ass for luck”.
At the Beachcomber Cafe in Trinidad, a man sitting at one of the outdoor tables calls to me by name — it’s Oscar, a bicyclist we passed a few days ago. We invite him to join us at our table for lunch, and have fun comparing stories.
The route now follows the coast again. Along the aptly-named Scenic Drive, we have to stop at every bend in the road to take another photo. The Hammond Coast Trail, the first bike trail we’ve been on in days, is a real treat.
We’re elated to reach Eureka because we’ll have a rest day tomorrow. Our lodgings are at the Inn at 2nd and C. The building dates to 1888, and has more character in a single one of its bay windows than any other entire place we’ve stayed at on this trip. The New York-style pizza we get for dinner is fairly good.
Bike to school, day 18: Rest day in Eureka, CA
We start the day with yummy coffee and pastries from Ramone’s Cafe — much better than yesterday’s Coffee of Despair.
Our recent day of substantial elevation gain has made us realize that some of our upcoming planned days are completely implausible: the mileage looked fine, but looking at the elevation now, we see there’s just no way we can stick to this plan.
So I spend the morning looking at my phone trying to stitch together a more realistic plan. This will require sacrificing our remaining two planned rest days. It also presents a real logistical challenge, because there are some inland stretches coming up where there simply aren’t any lodging options in some stretches. I manage to cobble together a new plan that still includes some harder days, but hopefully no harder than what we’ve already done.
Los Bagels has the first good bagels we’ve eaten in a while.
To help make the big hills a little easier, we pull all of our camping gear and anything else we can live without for the rest of the trip, then go to a post office and mail it all back home. Total weight savings: about 26 pounds!