Day 1- What a Start! (Christi)

  

Crazy people in Astoria, OR

September 9th, 2020 

    The drive to Astoria was over before we knew it, and the journey on our bikes began! The day was full of events that had nothing to do with a bike tour. My aunt called me in the morning to let me know that my family was evacuating from Lincoln City, OR due to the Echo Mountain fire. Anxiety set in. Should we even be going on this ride? I figured there wasn’t much else I could do; my family was safe (heading to my aunt/uncle’s in Washington, my house in Troutdale is safe and I have three weeks off work. Most of the trip to Nehalem Bay I was keeping an eye on the news, and we were making a plan B assuming that Highway 101 would be closed by the time we were supposed to get to Lincoln City on Friday. 

    As we got into Astoria, switched into our riding gear, and began riding I quickly learned that the air was not hazy from fog, but hazy from smoke. The sensation of my lungs being on fire was unpleasant, but luckily only lasted until we made it across the bridge going towards Seaside and then the blue skies gave us a pleasant view. The total mileage was about 40 miles.

Here are a few pictures from the ride:

Biking out of Astoria and suffocating in smoke

Decent view from Seaside, OR

Some famous rock in Cannon Beach, OR

Viewpoint north of Nehalem Bay

Viewpoint looking south- fog or smoke?

We made it!!

    The campground was a welcoming sight. Our friends Davita, Maya, and Hannah already had their camping gear set up and it was nice to see them. We had a great camp site near the beach access path thanks to Brandon. We changed out of our riding gear and “stumbled” up the small sand dune to the beach. Despite the smoke it was a nice evening on the beach.

We rode over that mountain...the small one to the left of the giant incline 😂

    Our night ended around a lantern due to the fire ban (no fires, not even small propane fires, which means I can’t use my jetboil cooking stove). Maya braided mine and Brandon’s hair; I’ll spare you that view for now haha. Besides Hannah, I was the first one in my tent to pass out for the night!

Now for our daily tally of weird things we saw on the side of the road and road kill:

Road kill- 1 possum

Weird things on the shoulder: axe head, allen wrenches, starfish (please don’t remove them from the ocean/rocks, not only is this illegal, but it kills them 😔), and a FULL can of PBR

My personal tally; 1 bug swallowed 

P.S. things I forgot- floor tire pump