Humbug Mountain State Park

September 27th to September 29th.

We had a plan to stay at Sunset state park and then go to humbug the next night.  We didn't make it to where they stayed though (and missed out on dinner i hear) but the next night we had planned to meet at humbug mountain.  So we set out south and went first to Bandon (not Brandon! ) and met a fellow there that had stayed where bryan and maggie did at sunset state park and confirmed their direction (thanks jeff! ). The road included a momentous hill, but generally pretty rolling and well insulated from the now head wind by trees.  Thank you trees!  The headwind is a tell tale sign, however, which we are now well acquainted with.  More of that soon.

South of Bandon we started coming across Ocean Spray factories and the cranberry road began (the cranberries spill out of the over-filled trucks so that, if one were so inclined, one could eat a pound of cranberries ever half mile by picking up all the spillage).  The hills were okay, the shoulder was okay for the most part too, but the headwind was quite cool and erin was getting a severe ache in her shoulders, knees, and hands.  We stopped and picked up riding tights in Bandon (they cut the wind like a miracle and keep the muscles warm as well as fast drying) and then found Alpaca wool neck warmers along the way too.  The pain continued, but probably was greatly lessened.

The rain was trying to start, though lightly.  We were getting hit with rain right back to Astoria, but now people were giving us warnings about severe winds coming.  Apparently a typhoon in Japan means a pretty good storm (50 mile per hour winds) in Oregon. We were aiming for Humbug, however, and the night was coming.  We ended up riding after dark, down dark winding hilly mountain passes (where the road is partially dropped away into the ocean along the cliff edge) with only our bike lights arriving in a gully/valley of humbug mountain around 7pm. The rain was still threatening to fly though, so we set up a 12 ft by 16 ft tarp we bought and made dinner and hung our food. 

Then the storm hit.

The tarp did stay up despite the winds, but the angles on it changed and the water was draining onto sloped ground and going under the tent.  what a hassle.  Frequent maintenance visits, one complete campsite move, 3 days, max wind speeds of 90 mph in gusts, and a tree that fell on the mountain side 40 meters away or so up the slow.  We have been carrying 2 full (small - 20 litre) panniers of food with us and dipped into them pretty heavily over the weekend.  By monday, though the weather was iffy, the wind was dying down and cabin fever  (under tarp, neck craned, cooking still getting soaked by horizontal rain fever? ) was set in pretty good so we continued on.