Oregon!

C2C4K OR.11.525

Crescent City to Cape Sebastian.

I got up early at the church to do some work and made coffee for the group.  I don’t do a lot of cooking, but I think I can get into handling the coffee in the morning as part of my contribution to food preparation.  Ryan got up later and made over easy eggs, bacon and toasted bagels with butter.  We’re starting to call ourselves professional eaters, amateur bikers.  I think it’s fitting.

We snagged a group picture with Charlie and headed out, today we were leaving California and heading into Oregon. Our first state completed, albeit well behind the fictitious schedule we set.  The morning ride was relatively flat and we made great time to the state boarder. We had a great time taking pictures next to the Welcome to Oregon sign, and met a gentleman named Sam heading into California.  He told us about this woman who lets bikers camp on her yard at mile marker 333. This was perfect as it was right around the distance we were hoping to go, but we had yet to find anywhere to camp.

Before talking about the day more, i just want to say that getting to Oregon feels like the first major milestone. It seems to have taken a while, but here we are, onto the next phase. Its most certainly a confidence booster.

We made a few stops today. First at the Oregon welcome center where two young girls hooked us up with some sweet stickers, post cards and maps for the ride.  We ate lunch there and headed out.  The Oregon cost is beautiful, and overall I have this sense it will trump California’s. Before going over the states tallest bridge we stopped at a lookout, where we could hike a few hundred feet down to an unoccupied, relatively “secret” beach, thus its name Secret Beach. It required climbing down at least a hundred of feet using ropes, given it being steep and not well tracked.  Monkey got a little dirty on the climb, and at one point I thought I had lost my camera cover for good, but I recovered it further down the grade.

The feeling of physical isolation in a place like the above is surprisingly pleasant.  The calm that you get when you've taken in your removal from buildings and roads and the pace of it all.

We pulled up to Cynthia's house after a nice climb into the wind and met Dale Goode, former special agent for the treasury.  He said Cynthia, the home owner, would be back later, but that we could setup in the yard.  It’s a gorgeous little house, with a spectacular view in the front. Cynthia showed up and gave us a more formal rundown. She has miniature donkeys, chickens and other animals. There was a nice outdoor shower and it was a great place to camp.  We ate some leftovers and called it a night after some stretching and watching a great sunset.