Nearly Oregon

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If you're ever on a bike tour and having rough weather, invite your father. It seems like my Dad is our good luck charm. Since we've all joined up in Centralia the weather has been extraordinarily good. No more torrential rain - hello blue skies and sunshine. Now to see if that luck will hold down the rest of the coast or if the fates will toy with us after we've softened.

This stretch of Washington has been very pretty. We've climbed through thick forest, followed along clear, winding rivers and seen Mt. St. Helens off in the distance. Yesterday included a lovely break next to the Cowlitz River in the town of Toledo.  The town was kind enough to have constructed a sturdy, wooden gazebo and we watched as the water rushed by.

We finished our day at the Paradise Cove RV Park and campground near the 5 freeway. It was a little noisy here but the price was affordable and included a fully stocked fire pit. We had a campfire but didn't really even need the heat. The front office of the park served as a kind of thrift shop/garage sale and my Dad scored a screaming deal of 10 cents for a camping cup he had been looking out for. He also found a sweater the day before at Goodwill for 1 dollar so he is now known as the King of Deals.

Beginner's luck had to come to an unfortunate end and today the oldest member of our group had two flats. There has been TONS of broken glass in the shoulder of the roads here. We had to devote a bit of the day to sorting out those repairs but such is life. In the town of Longview we stopped for a lunch break at some beautiful Japanese gardens and Rach disappeared into a tree with a hollow trunk and a hole at the bottom to get inside. She called it the "Tree of Shame" and you had to go there if anyone misbehaved. Thankfully we all toed the line.

In the late afternoon we basked in the sun's rays as we pedaled west along the Columbia River. There were some large shipping vessels moving along the water - much bigger than I would have expected. The banks on the opposite side looked to be about half mile distant. Our stop for the evening is the small town of Cathlamet. The marina here is full of sailboats and the dike that protects the slips has a campground on it. Views here are wonderful - boats moving subtly against their dock lines, jumping fish breaking the water's surfaces, and sheer rock walls across the way. Rach and I took a short stroll to a brewery near the marina, shared a Hefeweisen and returned to our camp site to turn in.

Tomorrow morning we take a ferry across the river to Oregon and head toward a town called Astoria and back to the Pacific Ocean.

The Motel 6 in Centralia, the next phase begins

Mt. St. Helens

Headed west

Afternoon break

Barge traffic

Comments

  1. CheriSeptember 28, 2018 at 8:02 AM

    Thank you for the photos. The countryside looks so pretty! Other than the two flats, glad to hear all is going well.

    Ride safely.

    Cheri

    ReplyDelete

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