Day Total - 45.3 miles
Trip Total - 928.4 miles
Good: tailwind
Bad: rain
Ugly: fog
We go up early this morning to try to beat the rain that was forecast to move in by the afternoon. When I looked up the weather on my phone though, the situation got more complicated. The timing of the rain had been moved up, so that we would be lucky to stay out of it even if we did bike as fast as possible. That being said, neither one of us wanted to stay in Lincoln City another night, so we made the decision to go for it.
The sky was overcast when we left, but it was a relatively warm morning again. As a result, we were both quite comfortable during the early part of the ride. We backtracked a mile or so from camp to pick up the Adventure Cycling route around the east side of Devil's Lake. That enabled us to avoid the remainder of Lincoln City and its heavy traffic. East Devil's Lake Road was nice for riding too, pleasantly rolling and quiet, as opposed to the busy strip malls on 101.
We had to get back on 101 north of Lincoln City, but only briefly. After a mile, we turned east onto Highway 18, which took us to an old inland routing of Highway 101. This was an all but empty road through dense forest (a Forest Service Experiment Station, as it turned out). It was also one big climb and drop, which reminded me a lot of Leggett Hill, except with pine and spruce instead of redwoods. It was also less than one third of Leggett's height.
At the top of the hill, it started to rain. Not much, just a light drizzle, but enough for us to stop and put our rain jackets on. At the time, we weren't sure if it would last, but it was still coming down when we rejoined 101 proper. To pull off would have been an overreaction though, and plus it was warm enough that the rain wasn't entirely unpleasant, so we kept going north.
After passing through the flats around Nestucca Bay, we again turned off 101, this time for a long stretch. We were going in and out of dairy country at this point, appropriately enough, since we had crossed into Tillamook County not long before. We were now following the Three Capes Scenic Route, which would take us past, appropriately enough, Capes Kiwanda, Lookout, and Meares before returning us to US 101 in the city of Tillamook.
A few miles after the turn onto this road, we arrived in touristy Pacific City. It would be our last real opportunity to stop for groceries, and with tomorrow's weather still up in the air, we wanted to stock up in preparation for a possible forced rest day. I also got coffee, more to warm up inside more than anything else. It hadn't stopped raining for a minute since it started almost 20 miles back, but then, it hadn't gotten significantly worse either. Still, the constant drizzle had gotten us wet after enough time. Fortunately, we had a tailwind, so we were making great time. The 30 miles to Pacific City had taken us only about two and a half hours, even with the long climb on Old Scenic 101.
After a half hour stop and a check of the weather (it wasn't going to get worse), we got on the road again and climbed a short ways to get over the headland of Cape Kiwanda. It apparently has spectacular sandstone formations, but we couldn't see them through the mist. What we could see were massive waves breaking violently starting hundreds of yards out in the ocean. The seas were the roughest we have seen on the whole trip.
Trip Total - 928.4 miles
Good: tailwind
Bad: rain
Ugly: fog
We go up early this morning to try to beat the rain that was forecast to move in by the afternoon. When I looked up the weather on my phone though, the situation got more complicated. The timing of the rain had been moved up, so that we would be lucky to stay out of it even if we did bike as fast as possible. That being said, neither one of us wanted to stay in Lincoln City another night, so we made the decision to go for it.
The sky was overcast when we left, but it was a relatively warm morning again. As a result, we were both quite comfortable during the early part of the ride. We backtracked a mile or so from camp to pick up the Adventure Cycling route around the east side of Devil's Lake. That enabled us to avoid the remainder of Lincoln City and its heavy traffic. East Devil's Lake Road was nice for riding too, pleasantly rolling and quiet, as opposed to the busy strip malls on 101.
We had to get back on 101 north of Lincoln City, but only briefly. After a mile, we turned east onto Highway 18, which took us to an old inland routing of Highway 101. This was an all but empty road through dense forest (a Forest Service Experiment Station, as it turned out). It was also one big climb and drop, which reminded me a lot of Leggett Hill, except with pine and spruce instead of redwoods. It was also less than one third of Leggett's height.
At the top of the hill, it started to rain. Not much, just a light drizzle, but enough for us to stop and put our rain jackets on. At the time, we weren't sure if it would last, but it was still coming down when we rejoined 101 proper. To pull off would have been an overreaction though, and plus it was warm enough that the rain wasn't entirely unpleasant, so we kept going north.
After passing through the flats around Nestucca Bay, we again turned off 101, this time for a long stretch. We were going in and out of dairy country at this point, appropriately enough, since we had crossed into Tillamook County not long before. We were now following the Three Capes Scenic Route, which would take us past, appropriately enough, Capes Kiwanda, Lookout, and Meares before returning us to US 101 in the city of Tillamook.
A few miles after the turn onto this road, we arrived in touristy Pacific City. It would be our last real opportunity to stop for groceries, and with tomorrow's weather still up in the air, we wanted to stock up in preparation for a possible forced rest day. I also got coffee, more to warm up inside more than anything else. It hadn't stopped raining for a minute since it started almost 20 miles back, but then, it hadn't gotten significantly worse either. Still, the constant drizzle had gotten us wet after enough time. Fortunately, we had a tailwind, so we were making great time. The 30 miles to Pacific City had taken us only about two and a half hours, even with the long climb on Old Scenic 101.
After a half hour stop and a check of the weather (it wasn't going to get worse), we got on the road again and climbed a short ways to get over the headland of Cape Kiwanda. It apparently has spectacular sandstone formations, but we couldn't see them through the mist. What we could see were massive waves breaking violently starting hundreds of yards out in the ocean. The seas were the roughest we have seen on the whole trip.
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| It was not a nice day |
We then climbed gradually through some more dairy farms toward Cape Lookout. We knew it would get steeper though - Cape Lookout is the highest climb in Oregon at just over 800 feet, the last 600 of which would be an unbroken uphill grade.
We started the main section of the ascent just after passing through the tiny village (not even a stop sign) of Sandlake. Immediately, we were back into forest, which kept some of the rain off of us. But the heavy mist and fairly steep grade caused me to have to stop every quarter mile or so. Why? Now that I was breathing heavily on the climb, my glasses were constantly fogging up! As we neared the summit, we entered the lowest layer of clouds. It's good there was little traffic this far off the main highway (and with the weather pretending to be February, I don't blame anyone) because visibility was extremely poor between the fog and the winding road. We reach the top without trouble though and without hesitation were ripping down the wet and steep north side of the hill.
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| The Cape Lookout climb |
The campground at Cape Lookout State Park was just past the bottom of the grade, and it's a good thing it was. My brakes were, not surprisingly, failing to give me much stopping power in the wet weather, and had it been on a slope at the speed I was going, I would have overrun the turn by a couple hundred feet at least.
The hiker/biker camp at Cape Lookout would be incredible in good weather. It's no more than 100 feet from the ocean among Sitka spruces. But today, the ocean was angry, with violent wave after violent wave crashing into the shore. Because of the rain (still falling) and fog, you couldn't even see the Cape itself less than 2 miles away. Fortunately, we got a slight break in the drizzle shortly after 2:30, which allowed us to set up our tents in relative dryness. Once we did that, we got out of our wet riding clothes and set everything out to dry as best we could. At least the panniers had kept the water out once again.
We stayed in our tents until almost 6:00, when the rain stopped enough for us to bring food to the nearby picnic shelter and cook dinner. By now, we could see the lower section of Cape Lookout, plus some rock formations to the north. We were even able to walk around the beach a bit after eating, but then the tide began to roll back in with a seeming vengeance and the rain, never far away, started falling again. We retreated to the tents, unsure of what we would wake up to the next morning.
View Day 25 - Lincoln City, OR-Netarts, OR in a larger map
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