Eric's Bike Adventure 1995

Trip Log Part 3: Lincoln City to Carl Washburne State Park

• Lincoln City to Carl Washburne State Park, Tuesday, July 18, 1995

  It turns out, of course, that yesterday was the last day I would see a completely blue sky until California. The clear sky when I went to sleep gave way to a completely overcast on in the morning. The bivy sac worked ok, but I baked in it. It would keep out any moisture, that's for sure, but the combination of the sleeping bag and bivy sac made for a personal sauna. Great for keeping warm. Actually, too good for keeping warm. Good for staying too hot! That was totally unexpected. Unlike a tent, where you can adjust the airflow and all that, you don't have that control in a bivy sac. Open and exposed to the elements, or shut and protected. There were just enough mosquitoes that it had to stay shut. Bummer.

  

  So, totally overcast morning. I was up early, before most other people in the campground. I cooked a little breakfast, packed up, stretched, and got on the road pretty early. Lots of touristy possibility today, the highlight being the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport. I stopped for my second breakfast at a cafe on Boiler Bay, so named because the boiler from an old shipwreck is supposed to be visible at low tide. It wasn't low tide, so I don't know if it's still there. The coast, though, is gorgeous. Very cliffy, with forests almost up to the cliffs. It's gotta be even more beautiful when the sun is shining. The first detour off of Highway 101 was for the Otter Crest Loop, where I was greeted by the vision of a shiny chrome dog, the hood ornament of a Mack truck. The silhouette of the grey chrome dog on the white truck against the cloudy grey sky was possibly the most striking image of the entire trip.

  

  Next stops were for the Devil's Punchbowl and the tide pools nearby. The Devil's Punchbowl is a big hole in the rocks with two sea caves entering into it. When the weather is storming, the tide coming into the two tunnels is supposed to mash together in a big swirling spectacle. The cleats in my biking shoes made for slightly unstable footing, but I got out enough to see some pretty cool tidepools, too. I ran into Jeff again here, and we would be jumpfrogging each other all the rest of the day. Back on the road, down to the Yaquina Lighthouse. The fog was actually getting worse as the day wore on, not better, so there wasn't much to take pictures of. I talked to one of the park service people at the lighthouse about my trip, and got a good picture of a bunch of seagulls all aiming out of the wind.

  

  Newport, next stop. Still looking for a bike store to fix my pedal, I stopped at the bike shop in Newport, but they had gone out of business. Remember not to lose any esoteric parts for your bike! Lacking a bike shop, I went across the bridge, past the brewery, and on to the aquarium.

  

  The aquarium actually had bike lockers, the only instance of them on my entire trip. While I was already starting to get less and less paranoid about leaving my stuff on my bike, having a locker there is most excellent. The aquarium itself was nice. All the standard stuff that almost all aquariums have, plus sea otters, jellyfish, and a great exhibit of frogs, both native and foreign. The poisonous frogs from South America were the prettiest. The colors of the poisonous ones are just unreal. All the small exhibits were in the main building, but the big ones, the seals, otters, aviary, were all out in the back, inside what looked like giant boulders. Sort of like Flintstone-land.

  

  When returning to get my bike, there were a couple guys sitting on their bikes outside the lockers. They asked if I would like to join them for some food, and I said ok, even though I had recently had some overpriced aquarium snack bar food a little earlier. We pedaled back to 101, and found a (surprise!) seafood place. I had a tuna sandwich, and got to hear the story of how they got into the aquarium for free. Wayne and Jonathan were just starting their ride today from Newport. Wayne had gotten here a day earlier, and was out eating at a burger joint, reading through a brochure for the aquarium. A woman came up, asked if he was interested in going there, and I guess he said the right stuff. She worked for the aquarium, and got both of them in for free! This chance meeting with Jayleen would turn out handy later, when Jonathan needed to get back to Newport to get home. Wayne added that the world needs more aggressive women.

  

  I rode with Wayne and Jonathan for the day. We got to see a blowhole near Cape Perpetua, and got to watch the people hopping around on the rocks nearby, trying to keep out of the blast. Here we ran into Jeff again.

  

  Finally, we all ended up at Carl Washburne State Park. I ended up eating pasta with Wayne and Jonathan. While making the food, they asked what I did, and I told them. They said I said a bad word: software engineer. (yeah yeah, two words.) Turns out that both of them are also software engineers. Jonathan is still working for Microsoft, and Wayne had quit Microsoft about a year ago. To make sure we didn't think the world was already too small, Jonathan knows my old friend Alastair, who used to work at Microsoft, and did entire Vancouver to Tijuana bike route a year earlier. Small world, indeed. If I had been a day earlier the last time I visited Alastair at the Mansion in Seattle, I would have had the chance to meet Wayne and Jonathan much earlier.

  

  Also in the hiker-biker site that evening was a woman who was walking down the coast by herself. She was going to do the Pacific Crest trail, but it was still snowed in this year. Rather than cancel the trip, it got moved down to the coast. We were wondering whether there would ever be any hikers at a hiker-biker site, and she was the only one.

  Day total: 69.9 miles, Trip total: 167.9