[Bike]
The Bike Touring Pages of
Chris X. Edwards

Summer 1997 - Yukon to California
Journals - 4 August 1997

--------------------------

Day 25

4 August 1997 (sunny; mileage = 52.6; Barview County Park) -- A - Yet another beautiful, perfect temperature, sunny day. What will we do when it rains? I'm sure we've forgotten how to put on rain gear. The Ortlieb hasn't even had a drop of rain on it yet. I'm not complaining, though. It does get hot when we're going uphill, but it's so nice to be able to see the scenery instead of clouds. It is cooler in the evening again, now that we're back on the coast. We had a couple very warm nights in the tent further inland, but this is nice. We were up close to 6 this morning and spent a little longer to get going because of talking to our sitemates, but we still left early. We were riding well. Chris' front derailleur apparently wasn't doing too well, but we made good time. Chris didn't remember seeing the coast too much when he rode before, but we saw a lot of beautiful coastline today (no clouds or fog). We saw several other cyclists, as we do every day, really. We are on what is labeled the "Oregon Scenic Coast Bike Route," or something like that. Donna and Tom (last night) had a map of the route that showed elevations and camping places. There is a decent space for us usually. It's pretty nice. We went through a tunnel today and there was a huge bicycle picture with lights. Cyclists push the button to start the lights flashing and people are supposed to drive 30 mph through the tunnel. A couple of big vehicles came through and it was still scary. We got to the top of a big climb and there were lots of pull offs, so we had lunch at one of them. Very nice. A Canadian couple pedaled up and stopped to talk. They were doing short days cycling and enjoying the beach and local amenities. They were having an Oregon-coast vacation via bicycle. We went past the park they were staying at because it was so early and we'd only gone about 35 or 40 miles. It looked like our next state park opportunity was about 50-60 miles further, but we decided to see what was on the way. We were pretty down on the state park rip off of yesterday, so maybe a cheap RV park or an in-the-woods spot (though showers are very welcome after sweaty hill climbs!). Boy, did we luck on out the campsite! At least, so far it's really nice. It's a country park place with over 200 sites, but it's not very full and the sites are sort of carved out of the beach scrubby tree growth. We found a site without any others very close and the beach is on the west side of it. Very nice. The water is clear. The beach is clean. Not many people. There's a jetty on the south side and some big mountain rocks on the north. We took showers and did laundry and had sun to hang the clothesline in. We ate a lot of our remaining food and still have a couple hours of daylight left for just loafing! We may stay here tomorrow, just because it's so nice. It's hard to imagine anywhere else will be this nice. Hopefully, something evil doesn't happen tonight to negate all this good feeling!
--------------------------
Previous Home Next
This page was created with only free, open-source, publicly licensed software.
This page was designed to be viewed with any browser on any system.
Chris X. Edwards ~ October 2000