First three days planned

Even though we arrive fairly early into Portland, getting to Astoria, assembling the bikes and getting organized will take most of the rest of the day. But, at least we will get to Astoria in the early afternoon thanks to a fellow WSLer who most kindly offered to shuttle us from the Portland airport to Astoria. That in itself has saved us many hours.

The realization of all the time involved set in when I tried to figure out the rest of that first day. By the time we arrive in Astoria, we will have little time to do what we had originally intended to do – ride out to the ocean for the wheel dipping ceremony, hitting Fort Clatsop on the way. Well, this plan seem realistic until I actually sat down and figured that it would take some time to check into our hotel, the Historic Elliot Hotel, and get organized. That mostly means assembling the bikes so that we can get out to the ocean, which looks to be about an hour’s ride away. That means two hours of riding, which isn’t bad at all when the day is young and Fort Clatsop doesn’t close at 5. So assuming that the earliest that we could get on the road is at 3:00, we could never get to the fort in time to have an unrushed visit there. That got me thinking of an alternate plan, which involves taking the bus over that big scary bridge, which is shorter than the riding route that I had planned, which had us riding over two smaller, less intimidating bridges.

I once attempted riding over a long suspension bridge in the Thousand Islands. The psychological friction was more than I could handle. I couldn’t even pedal the bike as I imagined falling over the guardrail into the river far below. I felt that I was sitting way above the guardrail and could easily be blown over the rail and maybe I could. If I were in the roadway, I would have had no problems or at least I think that it would be more tolerable far from the railing. I got off the bike and walked across the bridge. At least, my legs still worked for walking even though making them pedal was impossible.

What a pleasure it is to see that the buses in a small town like Astoria all have bike racks. What a concept. Seems that somebody had the foresight to see what a boon to the economy cyclists might be. Considering that many x-country cyclists begin in Astoria, catering to them makes a lot of sense.

Well now the plan is to spend that first afternoon exploring Astoria, which seems to have plenty of attractions like the Maritime Museum, a river walkway and the Astoria column. That suits our schedule fine especially considering that we have come from another time zone, started out very early in the day and might be fatigued. At least those all sound like good excuses for pursuing this plan.

The second morning, we will take advantage of an early bus ride to the other side of the big scary bridge. We will likely ride to the site of the wrecked ship, Peter Iredale, just because it looks like a good spot to access the Pacific. After our little ceremony (and I will ask my friend and feng shui consultant, Mary, if there is any blessing that we can do) we will be the first in line when the doors open to Fort Clatsop that morning.

We can leisurely explore the fort and then pedal back to the Elliot via the two less scary and closer bridges. We can throw on the bags on the bikes and head out on Route 30, a road that looks like a bit of a challenge for the first day of riding. Although I have conquered the hills of New Zealand and the Baja Peninsula, that was after days of riding them and when I was a lot younger. Hills intimidate me. Combined with the numerous logging trucks and rv’s that supposedly frequent this highway, the riding may be less than pleasant. With that in mind and also considering that we don’t expect to leave Astoria until after lunch, we are planning a relatively short, but seemingly challenging first day of riding. I am very appreciative to the journalers who wrote about the ride itself on that stretch. Since most seemed to find it unpleasant, I have considered that when taking into consideration the amount of riding for the day. And hey, combined with the ride to the ocean and back to Astoria, it looks like it will still be a 50-mile day and that is plenty for me.

Ferries and islands fascinate me, so we will end the day with a ferry ride to Puget Island, not to be confused with Puget Sound. The ferry runs hourly so at most we can wait 59 minutes for the next one. We have found a WSLer on Puget Island, so we are good to go.

The next day will take us off Puget Island and onto Route 4 in Washington. Obviously,this isn’t the typical route that most take or maybe it just isn’t written about much in the journals. Web searches for exact details render scant results. At least I know that the route to Longview is a pleasant ride, but it is from Longview and beyond to Vancouver that information becomes scant. I know that the Interstate can be avoided by biking on a very hilly route and adding in some miles, but gosh, that just doesn’t sound appealing. Starting out on the highway early in the day might be ok. It seems that we only need to ride it for 10 miles or so max, so it doesn’t seem such a formidable task.

Woodland has a lilac festival at the Hulda Klager gardens. We should get there in time to enjoy the gardens for a while. Searching for the gardens brings up links to hotels in the area, which we will definitely need because we don’t see any WSLers in the area and no campground either.
The deceiving thing about the listings is that some look very close, but they are across the river in Oregon. Well, unless you have a boat, then the next nearest motel is not really 3 miles away, but closer to 33 or 43. I did have to double check to see if I missed seeing a bridge between St. Helen’s Oregon and Woodland WA. Nope, there isn’t one.

While researching one of the Woodland motels, I came across some court papers, which involved a meth lab raid at one of the hotels. Hmmmmm. Guess that might be one to avoid. Then again, that raid happened several years ago. Maybe some deeper digging will turn up some user reviews.