Astoria to Seaside Oregon

Captions from top: View from the hostel yard, Mom just for you us at Lewis and Clark, We can see our shadows!!! Sun!!, Seaside from way above, Dani eating her health food,
Astoria-Seaside 10/20/09
Day 4- 34 miles

We started today with the notion that it should be a rest day. Our legs are pretty sore, especially our quads. Our butts are also adjusting to long hours in the saddle and they are a bit sore. So, we figured we would take it easy. We started the morning by picking up the raccoon trash Dani talked about and picked up camp. Then we headed down to the beach for our first glimpse of the Pacific Ocean. We took a nice bike trail through Ft. Stevens State Park to the shipwreck of the Peter Iredale on the beach.

From Ft. Stevens State Park we took some nice slow paced country roads to Ft. Clatsop National Historical Park about 10 miles away. When we arrived at the visitor's center the sun peaked through so we took the rare opportunity to sit on a bench and dry while we ate lunch. This park is small, but it was worth visiting. The interpretive video is told through the eyes of the Clatsop Indians that Lewis and Clark interacted with. We left this park and headed to Seaside, Oregon.

The ride to Seaside was easily my favorite part of the route to bike so far. The route took us off of hwy 101 and onto small country roads that were not even always two lanes. The scenery was amazing, nice agricultural lands mixed with dense forest and plenty of turns in the road to keep things interesting. The last few miles go up a fairly steep grade and then drop straight back down an extremely fun descent back to the ocean at Seaside. In Seaside we found a hostel and they allowed us to pitch our tent in the back yard. We met two guys from British Columbia at the Seaside Hostel that are traveling down to Baja Mexico for two months so that they can learn how to surf. One of the guys was a firefighter in Canada, so it was interesting for me to chat with him about similarities and differences. We treated ourselves to supper at a Chinese restaurant and gorged ourselves on some needed food. I was still so hungry I ate a huge ice cream cone after dinner.

Greg