Friday, July 3, 2009
Day 11 - Newport, OR to Dunes City, OR - 64.1 miles
We started off the day with one more fun meal at Cafe Stephanie's with D-A and Seth. Despite not getting on the bikes until 11:30, we still managed to reach our mileage goal with some stops along the way. The first stop at a viewpoint proved to be longer than expected after Steph temporarily forgot how to unclip her shoes and gracefully tumbled over - apparently it's not like riding a bicycle. The most notable stop was at the Sea Lion Cave - a bit of a tourist trap, but really cool. An elevator brought us 205 ft. into the ground where massive Stellar Sea Lions filled the biggest cave in North America. Just when we thought the adventures were over for the day as we rolled into camp, 3 German bikers in the same situation told us that there were no hiker/biker sites and said, "We're planning to hike into the dunes and wing it." They invited us to join them and we jumped at the opportunity to check our first item off the scavenger hunt. We followed Johannes, Evan, and Shtephen (we're pretty sure Jack or Jamie named him) into the dunes for about a mile before the forest gave way to endless dunes. We set up camp and shared stories of our journeys. They are doing the trip in the simplest way possible - they dug a hole in the sand to make fire, cooked up some pasta over the fire and then curled up in sleeping bags on the sand. We looked like we were from Greenwich when we set up our brand new REI tent and chowed down on our Subway dinner. They're on a $5/day food budget - our $5 dollar footlongs didn't seem like such a good deal anymore.
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Happy Fourth! Steph, I hope you managed to tumble on to grass and not gravel??? Did Austin take good care of you?
ReplyDeleteD said they had a great time with you guys. Sounds like it was a lot of fun. they are somewhere between Idaho and Chicago, having left the Oregon trial behind them.
I'll start thinking about scavenger ideas. I would have said whale spotting, but you did that already. How about a meal in a Michelin restaurant, a spin by Mrs. Doubtfire's house and some seal spotting for starters...and a night with some Irish bikers?
More to follow. enjoy the fireworks over the Pacific.
Happy 4th of July to you both!! Sorry to hear about your fall Steph. I hope that it didn't hurt too much and isn't too painful to pedal. Another knee scar to add to your collection?
ReplyDeleteI have a suggestion for your scavenger adventures - Enjoy a bag of freshly picked cherries when you get to California. Grammie and Grandpa followed the same route you are taking in their RV, 23 years ago, and they said the cherries are the best!
We thought of you guys again this weekend after we went for another bike ride a little further south in New England - but we definitely drove the miles between Portland and Cape Cod! We went with Tony and Ray, who, for all his mechanical expertise, would have had absolutely no idea how to fix the automatic transmission bike Jon was riding - kind of a cool idea, but definitely had its glitches and not ready for the big time touring you guys are doing. We spent most of the time on back roads looking at fancy vacation homes, but did a 300ft stretch of harrowing riding along a tight and busy state highway sandwiched between overgrown thorny shrubs and a trucks towing small yachts, that was just about all we could handle. Hopefully you guys will find bigger shoulders than that in Cali.
ReplyDeleteLove,
Jon and Louisa
Some ideas for the scavenger hunt:
ReplyDelete-Eat a hot dog in three stadiums
-Go on a game show in LA
-Teach some fellow bikers how to play Quarente
-Give a homeless person a $5 foot long in San Francisco
-Take a picture with a transvestite
-Go skinny dipping in the Pacific
...more to follow