This week has been fun and slow. Lots of sightseeing, what -felt- like lots of biking, but not actually that much distance covered. It's Friday afternoon and we're in Florence, about to head out to the dunes. 75 miles in 5 days is pretty slow by biking standards, but that's not what it's about, is it?
Monday was pretty amazing. Long and frustrating, but we were the masters of it. After our shower, we went to the library, chilled on the beach, had a lovely relaxing time, and finally left town around 3. We made it down to Newport that night. On the way we split the most delicious bowl of clam chowder at the Sea Hag in Depoe Bay - courtesy of an anniversary gift from Regina :) If you pass through there, go eat clam chowder. I hate clams and it was delicious.
Passed Boiler Bay and saw awesome cliffs. Sorry for using awesome so much to describe things.. there's just not much else I can say. One cliff had this huge sheet of dark gray rock hanging down off it at an outward angle, like cliff was a girl with hair blowing out into the bay. Pretty fascinating. Also there was a fenced off area in which we could see a steep drop-down cave with another fence guarding it, but there were too many people around for us to investigate. Sad. Then we hit the otter crest loop. It's a nice little offshoot of the main highway that lasts for a few miles, and the bike route runs along it. VERY LONG HILL. Not as bad as Day Hill, but still challenging. Halfway up as Miah was struggling immensely and I was feeling more in shape than I thought I was, we discovered that his gears were all off and he'd been going up the whole damn thing in the hardest one. So he's basically superman. Ogreman. Dug out our lights just in time to coast down the hill and experience our first night-biking. We were trying to push to Newport to find the guys from the last night who had offered us a pizza if we met up with them, but we never found them. We did end up playing some pool and having a beer before heading out to find CAMPING: The Most Awesome Part Of The Day.
We came into a state park at midnight, tired as shit, not caring about the 12 bucks we'd have to pay. The ranger station was closed, so we pitched up and planned to pay in the morning. Come morning, no one approached us, and we weren't about to volunteer money, so we grabbed some free coffee and books, and headed out like stealthmasters.
Next day we went backwards. Finally made it to the bike shop and got a new axle, bumped into Regina again, free coffee and muffins, sat on a couch for an hour, ate stale cheetos that we found... good times. Loaded up at the food bank, went to a campground on the other side of town, and payed up. (Couldn't go back to the first one, 'cause they might have recognized us, etc..) Ate a FEAST. The bank gave us this giant bag of stuffed potato things - basically giant tater tots stuffed with cheese. Ya. Beach adventures, more showering, and bed. (Beach adventures will be published when I write them. It was pretty awesome. Giant sea slug banthas and such.)
We showered again the next day. Why not if you can? Pretty uneventful day. Made it down about 5 miles past Waldport, didn't find a free camping area we thought was there, and crashed.
And then yesterday.. Smelt Sands park is amazing. We saw it at high tide, with the water crashing up through this huge fissure thing. It had made a natural bridge over this huge undercut cave thing, and we got nice and salty trying to get a closer look. Settling down near the coast is beginning to call to us. Next we stopped at Devil's Churn, which was probably the coolest, most engrossing thing we've seen the whole trip. Another watery chasm/fissure thing, but waaaaaaaaaay longer. Couple hundred feet climb down to the mouth of it, then we hiked -very- carefully all the way around it. Also seen near high tide. It was pretty spectacular. Maybe 200 feet of rocky chasm jutting straight into the land, with surging waves crashing up into it, banks undercut, and the chasm goes back another 30 feet or so into the rock with a ceiling above it. Spent the better part of an hour exploring the beach around it, got lost in a million tide pools, saw the most fascinating rocks - all those striations in the lava flow that looks like a glacier went over it, but all bubbled and pitted from the salt spray, red and black and gray and tan... Daddy, you need to see it. And Ethan, we found you a piece of driftwood there. Cross your fingers that we don't loose it.
Ran into Regina AGAIN. I think she's our bicycle sidekick leapfrog buddy. Ended up camping in the woods, had a fire on the beach at low tide, which was wonderful until we looked up an hour later and saw that the water was about 20 feet from us. Seriously... the Pacific is a sneaky, treacherous, clingy bitch. It once tasted our feet and now it can't get enough. The instant we're not paying attention it comes crawling in to suck the life from us. 'The sea hates you'.. I think it just loves us. It was pretty epic. Got to remember that the tide flooding a foot means a lot more when you're on a flat beach than when you're on a steep one.
Miah says I'm writing a novel. So be it.
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