Friday, August 20, 2010

We've made it to Portland!

Well after a long haul from the coast yesterday we made it finally to Portland! It was a pretty long day (141 kms to be exact) but actually one of the flatest yet....as a side note traveling from the coast to Portland we would definitely recommend taking highway 18 and 99W (in case any readers decide to do this trip:)...we had been dreading this part of the ride and it wasn't so bad (besides some incidents and the heavy traffic).

We last left you during day 11 when we were on our way to the town of Yachats (pronounced Ya-huts....we have been laughed at by many people by mispronouncing that name). Once again, the campground we were looking at on our map was not exactly where we thought it would be (up a monster hill and too far to go off the highway) so we decided to push on to Yachats...which is where we had the most wonderful night yet on our trip...unfortunately both of us forgot our cords to upload pictures for this post so you'll have to use your imagination...lets just say we got an incredible deal on a "luxury suite" that included access to the hot tub and indoor pool that was overlooking the ocean! We have never felt so "lucky" in our lives! We bought some beer and chilled out for the rest of the night. Our rider for the day was Brandon V from Lisa's grade 4 class, (I'll post the picture when I have my cord on the next post) We took you to Perpetua Cape which is a great cliff area overlooking the ocean and where James Cook came with his ship in around 1776...

The next day we made pancakes and enjoyed our suite until 11am (it was a bit of a late start to the day...we wanted to enjoy that room). We cycled to a state park in Lincoln City (85kms) and had one of our nicest days which included sun and beautiful lookouts. We actually met a family cycling from Canada!...we haven't met a lot of Canadians so it was nice to chat with them. That night we had a bit of a canadian party at the campground..I guess as you get closer to Canada you meet more canadians. One family was riding with their two daughters (6 and 3 years old)..we thought this was so incredible! We had a really great night listening to all of the other traveller's stories...there are some amazing cyclists doing this ride!

And so that brings us to yesterday..the long haul. We had decided that we would do the whole ride into Portland once we hit the half way point (a little strawberry shortcake also might have boosted our energy too:). We really wanted to have a day off too (it's been 13 days straight of riding and Daun could also see Travis!!). Unfortunately there were a few things that happened along the way that didn't make us feel like we were actually going to be able to do it:

1) we woke up and it was raining (it hasn't actually rained much at all and it was this morning...making roads super slick)
2)6 kms into the ride Daun fish tailed and fell off her bike (I have never felt no control on my bike like this ever ...it was crazy. I fell also by a blind corner on the busy road..anyway all is good and a few scrapes...I was very lucky to not get smoked by a car so thank you drivers!)
**I was riding ahead of Daun and heard her go down- we are so lucky nothing worse happened, we definately are lucky-
3) Daun gets her first flat (Lisa does not hear me yelling at her so she continues riding and then waits up a head not knowing where I was...not to worry she rode back and we got back on the road
4) Daun loses her camera...not to worry because of the heavy traffic cars saw the camera fall out and yelled at me that something had fallen...thank you to the lady who picked it up but I have no idea why she hugged me...I guess she felt like she needed a hug

We want to thank everyone who has donated for the cause, we are half way to meeting our goal of 3000$. It means a lot to us that people are reading our blog and supporting us on this journey.

Anyway we are now on our day off and met up with Travis. Tomorrow we will start to head north on route to Seattle. Washingtion state here we come! We will also hopefully find a chance to post some pictures but until then we're going to enjoy the day...happy hour here we come!

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