Portland to Eureka 2018

The second best part of this trip (after the eating) was meeting people along the way. If you've been on bike tours, you'll know that you often run into people who are on the same route as you. You build a bond over the adventure as you spontaneously meet up with one another along the way. We've already mentioned the first Dave.

The morning of day three, we met two more friends at the Jessie M Honeyman Campsite. Enter...Dave number two, later nicknamed Red Jacket Dave for his red jacket that he was wearing everytime we saw him. Like us, he was riding all the way down to California! Unlike us he was going much further than Eureka. Also unlike us, with our rather rigid agenda, Dave carried a book containing all the hiker/biker campsites along the coast and as he biked, he would just stay at the one he was closest to at the end of the day. Very cool. Dave was riding solo until...

Enter...Garreth from England - who ever since he got a flat and lost his pump a couple days before, decided that he would just tag along with Red Jacket Dave and borrow his pump when he needed it. He was traveling from Canada all the way to Mexico. He had a frankensteined bike fully loaded with four paniers and then some. He would sleep in the open, no tent nothing, down a large bottle of wine every night, maybe pack a bowl or two (after all it was Oregon) and wake up and bike 50-70 miles the next day no problem. Probably one of the most interesting people I've met in my entire life. Next time you see me, ask me about his story. After chatting with our new friends, we hit the road.

The morning of this day must not have been as difficult as the rest because quite frankly I don't remember much of it. Curtis did get a pinch flat coming down one of the smaller hills, but we changed out the tube pretty quick!

I did get more pictures though.

I guess people go fishing in that lake. We happened to stop here for a break just as a woman was taking her boat out. There were also ads for fishing licenses for sale on the bulletin board.

I think those informational panels are about Umpqua fishing.

Somehow we made it to North Bend for lunch. We stopped at subway. Normally, I order a footlong, eat half and save the other half for later. Not on this trip, I ate a whole footlong and a bag of chips and I was still hungry after!

Red Jacket Dave had caught up with us so we ate lunch with him and he told us more ridiculous stories about Garreth from England.

Before we knew it, story time was over and we were on our way to Seven Devils Road. Seven Hills from Hell would probably be a more appropriate name. This climb was so steep we all had to dismount our and push bikes for a good 100 yards.

Given the amount we climbed, there should've been a pretty nice view at the top. But the only view we had was of clouds.

After battling rolling hills the past two days, "At least the we going downhill" were forbidden words unless you dared jinx the route. But today, after climbing somewhere between 100 and 100,000 feet - according to Curtis - it was all downhill to the next campsite. We played so many different categories of the alphabet game to pass the time. We named colors, sports, countries, cities, movies, inventors.

And when we finally reached the entrance to Bullard's Beach, just as we were rolling past the "Welcome to Bullards Beach" sign, we heard a loud clanking sound. It appeared that Sean's chain had popped off his gears again. We stopped to investigate. A small wave of panic hit as I grabbed his chain to place it back on the ring and realized that I was looking at the end of something that should've been a loop. We had not brought any extra links.

A HUGE OVERSIGHT looking back at it... what I wouldv'e given for one of those hipster bike chain bracelets. lol.

But we kept our cool. Curtis rode ahead to secure the campsite and to find a park ranger to possibly borrow some pliers to fix the broken link. In the meantime, Sean and I did our best to try to fix the chain with just the multitool. With a little bit of creativity and luck, we actually managed to fix it without the pliers! We met up with Curtis at the campsite.

Compared to the other campsites, this one was fancy! We could have gone glamping if we wanted to. There were yurts and activity areas for families. Next time we may opt to go big! There were also food lockers at this site (for raccoons, not bears) and charging stations and showers like the rest. I also remember there being a cool bike repair stand fully equipped with tools.

The nearest restaurant or store was about 2.5 miles away across a large bridge. As you can guess, we didn't really feel like biking anymore this day so we cooked. Well... we tried anyways.

Back when we were training, we used to end our rides at the park and attempt to cook a meal as if we'd just finished a day biking for real. Our meal of choice was beans, rice, taco seasoning, and some kind of easy to cook sausage. This was our first attempt on the road. We also toasted some lavosh bread with string cheese as an appetizer.

It didn't come out terrible. About a quarter of the rice was crunchy...and we ended up having to throw away the pot. We somehow managed to eat our fill and at the end of the day it wasn't really about taste, it was about volume.

You'll notice the cans of soup donated to us by new friends made at this campsite. We also ran into Garreth and Dave again!