Oregon

The Cowlitz River near Castle Rock (taken on my walk to the supermarket on Thursday evening).  There were a few groups of people swimming in the river 

Someone has put a lot of work into preserving  / restoring this old Chevy

On the ferry from Puget Island 

Goodbye Washington 


This was taken on a little loop away from the main road

Sealions on the pontoon in front of the boat - there must have been 100 or more and they were extremely vociferous 

The ferry man told us to try this espresso shack in Astoria, so we did - it's only about 50 metres from our accommodation 

We saved ourselves the stress of crossing this monster (on the very narrow bike path) by sticking to the official Adventure Cycling route and not doing the alternative suggested in our book 

A good part of today has been spent riding along the banks of the Columbia River, first on the Washington side, and then the last 50km on the Oregon side. You might think riding the banks of a river would be flat but not so – we had one hill (Clatsop Crest) that took us up to 656m (we started at sea level or thereabouts). The road has been mostly busy and, in places, the shoulder has been tenuous. I managed to clip some debris on the shoulder, which pinched the back tire, so we had to deploy one of our spare tubes – thankfully the rim and tyre don’t seem to be damaged.

The crossing to the Oregon was part way across on a bridge (to Puget Island) and then on a very small ferry.  The ferry only runs on the hour so we passed up the opportunity of coffee to be just in time for the 10:00 sailing. We were asking the ferry man about coffee places on the other side and he offered to brew one for us from his personal supply – what a nice man 🙂.

121km with 1004m of ascent has brought us to Astoria, more or less where the Columbia River discharges into the Pacific.  The weather has been a bit drab again, despite a forecast of full sun!?  It is a bit brighter now though. 

If anyone can tell me why the text has suddenly gone centred then please do, otherwise you are just going to have to live with it 😉.





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