Summer 1997 - Yukon to California
Journals - 3 August 1997
Day 24
3 August 1997 (sunny; hot; mileage = 71.7; Ft. Stevens State Park, Oregon)
-- X - We woke up on time and had coffee and light breakfast. We said bye
to the Swiss and headed out. We had a pleasant ride to Kelso. There,
however, we were annoyed by an obnoxious honker. Grr. We got to the
neighbor town where we stopped to admire a tattoo shop logo that looked
very similar to a bit of Dennis' artwork. We then had a long climb crossing
the bridge over the Columbia River. On the bridge, April heard more
car-bound jerks. Right away in Oregon, we had a huge climb with big views
of Mt. St. Helens and the river. There was a German couple on motorad that
I said grüezi to. We did some more climbing later and finally a huge
descent. We had a snack at this town but went on to the next town for
lunch. It was kind of irritating with the lunch/breakfast cut off. The food
wasn't that good, and I left not full. And there was lots of plates of
uneaten food lying around. As we were leaving, 2 male and 1 female cyclists
were stopping there for a break. They seemed kind of non-friendly
(different from unfriendly). They left a couple of minutes ahead of us. I
took pleasure in quickly catching them and totally smoking them up what
turned out to be a substantial climb. April was riding very well, too.
There were quite a lot of big, shallow climbs. We did very well though,
even with a semi-head wind. In Astoria, my front derailleur cable broke.
Hmm. We rode right by 2 bike shops but it's Sunday. Grr. We crossed the
Astoria Bay Bridge and went to the Fred Meyer store. While April shopped, I
fixed the derailleur cable with the Onza traverse. We rode to the state park
the long way. We went through a big song and dance to get ripped off here.
Hike-bike = $4.50 each! And we shared a $12 site. Grrr. The other occupants
are Tom and Donna from near Seattle. They're riding down to California on a
tandem with a custom Burley trailer (he customized it). He seems to have
his set up pretty well worked out, but I don't think they're our caliber
and certainly not Swiss caliber. His rig looks good for the nice stuff.
They plan a big-world tour and I think they're going to learn a lot about
riding in shit -- light years from a bike shop. This campsite is stunning.
There are over 27 million people camped here. It is mind boggling. We took
long showers since they were "free." Ha! The mosquitoes are becoming
annoying. Nothing like Yukon skeeter clouds, though! So this is an
improvement.
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