Oregon!

September 17th,

"If you want to be seen, you go to Cannon Beach.  If you don't want to be seen, you go to Gearhart.  If you want to be obscene, you go to Seaside."
This is what our couch surfing host told me last night.  Seaside is the tourism town in the strip that is 20 miles long in Northern Oregon just south of Astoria.  Gearhart is a wealthy "second home and summer cabin" community with very few consumer services and barely a restaurant and Cannon Beach is an art and culture center with a disproportionate number of art galleries.  

Seaside is normally known for its surfing but right now the normally huge southern swells are fighting a wind going northerly rather than the usual southerly winds (also means cycling is about 35% slower going south with the current weather pattern.  Fortunately, ever since a jetty was built here, the beach has gone from a rocky shore to a incredibly nice fine grit clean sand.  The beach here is superb. The chocolate/candy shop in Seaside is also superb. 

We are staying with a pair of teachers in Gearhart.  They impressed us with their very fine dinner prepared last minute (reminds me of last Easter/Christmas at Grandma Wells').  We received lots of encouragement in our travels as well.  They have a small field of flowers as a side business with a flower stand on the highway for self-serve sales.  Apparently a fairly lucrative project.  The area is also rural enough that they are able to keep a few chickens in a chicken coup with their greenhouse.  What a beautiful way to live! Sleeping in a real bed is also proving to be quite the treat. 

erin here:

Backing up a bit...the ride down from Cape Disappointment to the 101 made me feel like I was on a rollercoaster! The road was so hilly you go from 35km/hr down to 8km/hr on the uphill in seconds, and the bends in the road on the downhill are so sharp the road is angled. Boy did that give me butterflies! And the best part about it was the quality of the road, unforunately narrow shoulders but not a crack in it the whole way.

On the way to the state border we went through our first tunnel, pushing the 'bicycle in the tunnel' button on the way in.  Supposed to be going through another further south which sounds much longer and harder to ride..uphill and curving to the left. Yikes. 

In light of Pete's nagging about riding more visibly we stopped at a bike shop today and picked up some more lights for our helmets and wheels. The ones for the wheels are motion activated so they create quite the glow when the wheel is spinning fast.  Can't wait to try 'em!