'the road here is as dangerous as hell, fast, furious and with a lot of bends.
Many people get killed on this road. I'm just tellin ya'.
Many people get killed on this road. I'm just tellin ya'.
Caramel Pig
Peddling the Dirt across North America
Organic Oregon Hippies
Stage 1
Astoria, Oregon – Cottage Grove, Oregon 266.64 Miles – 429.11 Kilometres |
It rained, day one and it rained, can you believe that? Fortunately being Kiwis who have lived in Scotland, we were well used to the rain. So with full, florescent yellow high visibility rainwear, we departed white-picket-fenced Astoria.
We had planned to keep it easy on our first day of our big wee bike ride. Our goal was 46 miles south to the town of Nehalem. We had intended staying in a Warmshowers for the night. Warmshowers is an accommodation sharing network for tour cyclists. It is all free of charge. Mostly kind and lovely people offer a bed or floor space for the night. The catch is you need to turn up on a pannier-laden bicycle.
So, heading south following the Pacific was a very southern New Zealand experience. The rain felt the same, the wind was too lazy to blow around you, the trees seemed vaguely similar, the only big exception was that here in Oregon the motorists were actually nice to you. Being horrifically obedient people, Americans seem to have heeded being told that they must give cyclists a metre's, or the imperial equivalent, clearance.
Like any coastal road, the elevation was lumpy. We seemed to spend most of our time either in our granny gear or our highest gear. As we crested one of the many pine tree scented bluffs, some random person started shouting encouragement at us. Halfway up another hill, I spotted on the crash barrier a bottle of water with a sign hanging off it that read 'for cyclists'. Whilst waiting for Sharon to exit the hippy Manzanita Fresh Food market, a soccer coach limped across the car park yelling 'right on man' and gave us snacks and bottles of Gatorade. There was a lady in a food bank that offered us hot water and toilets and this was all on day one. Unbeknown to us, this beautiful hospitality of the unknown white stranger was to become our new normal.
Bang on tea time we arrived at the end of a nasty wee climb and our hosts in Nehalem. Their home was full of interesting hippy stuff. Our room for some reason had straw in it and the lounge was full of beehives in the process of being painted. We were fed an organic vegan bean stew with homemade blueberry alcoholic cider. Pacific Oregon was all very weird and gloriously otherworldly. I loved it and no doubt if I had stayed there a few more weeks, I too would have been wearing Birkenstocks.
The next day we continued south on 101, up and down hills, in and out of tunnels and rain. We rested at beachside picnic tables and received encouragement from random strangers. Our legs were fresh, it was all very pleasant and somehow didn't seem like the real thing. We had this sense that America was lurking round the corner somewhere. Surely the whole country wasn't wildly left wing and eating non GMO food.
That evening we snuck in to a closed campground hoping to pitch our tent and hang our bear bag in some quiet spot, only to discover that we were to share the spot with other cyclists. This was our first night in our new Big Agnes tent and it was both quiet and peaceful.
Day 3 of 136 is where the riding started. Our first stop was a gorgeous Farmer's Market in Neskowin. This was another hippy-hive full of organic people buying and selling organic food. Most of them smelt like sea salt and pine needles. We purchased Sea Bass for lunch. The town also had something that we had learned to value even more than the ocean, vegans and kind motorists - it had public toilets and thus a place to fill our water bottles.
On the way out of town we stopped at a Convenience Store. Unfortunately Tillamook cheese is a lot cheaper than healthier local hippy cheese. Whilst Sharon was in the shop, I stumbled across the first of many racing cyclists. These women and men were racing unsupported across the country. The first of them had taken five hours to cover what we had done in three days. And we had thought we were hard core!
Just out of Neskowin we turned on to the Old Scenic Highway 101. It was beautiful, carless and quite a climb. The road was damp, steep and slightly rough. We listened to the sound of waterfalls and birdsong. I enjoyed being able to ride beside Sharon and chat our way through the moss covered pine trees. We tackled our first serious switchbacks. I passed the time by pretending I was Alberto Contador on EPO, however the only drugs we were taking was peanut butter on scuzzy English muffins.
As we cycled up the hill we were overtaken by many racing cyclists. Being slightly bored I screamed out encouragement to all of them. Some were in the zone and ignored me, some nodded and raced on, whilst others rode alongside for a chat. We were grateful for these happy people.
Before long we had summited and had found ourselves sitting at a picnic table, cooking our fish in front of the Otis Fire Station. Back out on the road the cycle race continued, but bizarrely enough they were all missing the left turn in front of us and instead were opting to ride across a bridge before doubling back to correct their mistakes. I spent much of our lunch break hollering “turn left, turn left”. A couple obeyed, most looked down at their GPS confused whilst drifting past the intersection before performing sudden U-turns in the middle of the bridge. It was cheap entertainment for me.
We spent the night in the truck-mud-racing yeehaa RV Park of Rose Lodge. It was our first open campground experience and rather much so a step down from European or Kiwi motor camps. Still, at least our tent was clean and our bicycles came with a kitchen.
In the morning we found ourselves stuck on some type of mountain pass with every kind of vehicle hurtling down it. The scenery wasn't much, the day wasn't happy and the roads weren't flash. We rode right through our planned stopping place of Grande Ronde. We accidentally found ourselves on an unpleasant dual carriageway before turning on to the 22 and heading over the hill towards Monmouth. We slowed and stopped in front of the rather dishevelled Rickreall convenience store. The plan was to ask about camping and if there was nothing, buy an ice-cream and sail on. Being Sunday evening we also had in the back of our mind attending a lovely lively tie-died hippy church.
Just as I was about to dismount my bike, a man who can only really be described as a tired brown polyester clad travelling vacuum cleaner salesman opened the door and walked right on up to us. He was brash and was enthusiastically spouting the virtues of his President, the Donald Trump. Like us, I can only presume he was in some kind of culture shock and we two healthy looking cyclists were the last straw that threw him into his diatribe. In shock we listened, never dismounted and as soon as he had finished, terrified we jumped back on our saddles and got the hell out of Dodge. We barely noticed the independent cycle path flying underneath us as we escaped this vicious and zealous Trumpite all the way to the University town of Monmouth.
Monmouth was a beautiful flat treelined overgrown village. We randomly stopped two men, who I think were a gay Mormon couple, on the street and asked if they knew of any churches that were open and on an outside chance if they knew of a place to camp. They immediately got on the phone and called their Christian friends, who jumped in their car and drove the block or so to find us. We were also quickly joined by a home owner and a random kid on a bicycle. Together on the street corner they made numerous phone calls with the result being no open churches this evening. Then the Christian openly stated that he would call Martha (not her real name) because she welcomed in strangers.
Two minutes later the Christians were driving down the street and we were frantically cycling behind them, being led to Martha's house. Martha and her husband allowed us to pitch our tent in their yard, use their shower and invited us to their neighbours for a BBQ. We spent a very pleasant evening under high leafy trees, in front of a fire enjoying multi-syllabled conversation.
The following day was a short one south, down the rather uninteresting fertile Willamette Valley. We were mostly on flat quiet roads, which meant we arrived quite early in Corvallis. We stopped on the outside of town, plugged 'supermarket' into our GPS and started heading to a Trader Joe's. On the way a lovely lady stopped us and offered her backyard for camping. We were actually a little peopled out, so explained that we were going to camp down by the river. Outside the market I was once again accosted by interested exciting people. They pretty much formed a line and then one by one proceeded in asking me the same questions. I was relieved and slightly agitated when Sharon reappeared from the shop. We had a quick lunch in a town park. Sharon disappeared to a chemist, I sat under a peaceful tree and read my book.
I was startled back into the present by a very quiet voice gently asking me where were we camping? I explained that we planned on spending a quiet night down by the river. The person introduced himself as Peace, he had to say it a few times before I worked out that his name was actually Peace, as in peace like a river or world peace. He explained that the river campsite had been cleared because it had been taken over by homeless people, however we were welcome to camp in his backyard. Though we would have preferred to be alone, we were very grateful.
So when Sharon returned, the three of us saddled up and cycled to the southern edge of town to join Peace and his wife for the evening. Much to my delight, Peace lived in a straw-bale house with a genuine compost toilet. We pitched our tent in the backyard roughly between the ducks and the chickens and settled in.
Somewhere during the evening's vegan conversation, it was announced that they had had cyclists hoisted upon them by a friend and that they would call him and return the favour. Next thing we know, the following night's bed was all sorted.
We had a peaceful though slightly paltry sleep amongst the poultry. Were fed yet another vegan meal before being shipped off to a health food store. It was kind of serial, four of us cycling to the health food store, being joined by other cyclists on city bikes all pelotoning along a narrow bike lane.
The shop was great, this is the place that I first discovered 'grind-your-own' peanut butter. However Mrs Peace was having way too much fun and kept enthusiastically delaying our departure. After stopping and buying a phone mount for my handlebars, we left town much much later than we would have preferred. Our stop for second breakfast was five minutes out of town on the other side of the rather pleasant and slightly boring Willamette River.
The rest of the day was pretty forgettable. It was flat and hot. We stopped at some religious group and purchased strawberries, but other than that we just overheated and got cranky.
Eugene seemed like a lovely place packed full of cycle paths, so many of them that we actually managed to get lost. Everything was lush and green and right on the river, it would have been beautiful if we had had the time to enjoy it. We were told we had to be at Peace's friend's place at five o'clock, the riding was technical city riding and we were being forced to ride almost 13 kilometres more than expected. Did I say we were grumpy? We got lost following Google through the university and when we eventually found the right street, we cycled at least two blocks past where we were supposed to stay. All in all, it was a miserable afternoon.
It turned out that we were staying at a hippy commune. We were given a room with a soft bed and an ensuite. I was struggling though, struggling with the seemingly obvious fact that so far all Americans seem to be vegan. For tea, I had the choice of eating tofu or polenta. I knew tofu, it is what the dogs leave on the lawn after their night's wandering. Polenta was an unknown, I presumed it didn't have meat in it, but I gave it a shot. It was the same colour and flavour as everything else I had eaten over the last week; brown and cardboardish. I had dried sausage in my pannier, but was too scared to munch on it, just in case the meat police jumped on me and kicked us out of our lovely room.
I shouldn't be mean, there is an inner-hippy in me and I got married in linen trousers.
The final day of our first leg was short, pleasant and steep. In order to keep off major roads, we took a quiet mountain, or at least large hill, pass. It was steep enough for Sharon to jump off and push and was a lovely climb through a pine needled high-end residential suburb. The descent was quick and a little hair-raising. At the bottom of the hill I stopped at a frontage road intersection to wait for Sharon. A local pulled up beside me and said, 'the road here is as dangerous as hell, fast, furious and with a lot of bends. Many people get killed on this road. I'm just tellin ya'.
This was a great encouragement to me. Hippies don't talk like this and if he lives down this road, then there is probably meat down there. We took care, bunched up and salivated on towards Cottage Grove.
Cottage Grove was a quaint village nestled in a valley. It took us no time at all from arriving in the town to finding our friends Mike and Darla's home. Within five minutes of stepping off the bike Mike informed me that we were having a barbecue for tea. It was too much to hope for and a fitting conclusion to the end of our first leg. We felt like we had achieved something.
We were way peopled out when we arrived, yet somehow though we spent plenty of time with Mike, Darla and Mike's mum Juanita, we finished our break with them feeling very refreshed. Mike took us to see every covered bridge in the area, we stocked up with supplies from a few shops and even had time to go out for meat, beer and country music. The singer Bob was excited to hear we were from Aotearoa, he had once sung with the world-famous-in-New-Zealand Suzanne Prentice. A fact that I am sure that no one else in the world cares about.
Our time in Cottage Grove was a little too short, but we left with full bellies and revived spirits. West Coast hippy Oregon was a fun microcosm full of generous, kind people and very little meat.
We had planned to keep it easy on our first day of our big wee bike ride. Our goal was 46 miles south to the town of Nehalem. We had intended staying in a Warmshowers for the night. Warmshowers is an accommodation sharing network for tour cyclists. It is all free of charge. Mostly kind and lovely people offer a bed or floor space for the night. The catch is you need to turn up on a pannier-laden bicycle.
So, heading south following the Pacific was a very southern New Zealand experience. The rain felt the same, the wind was too lazy to blow around you, the trees seemed vaguely similar, the only big exception was that here in Oregon the motorists were actually nice to you. Being horrifically obedient people, Americans seem to have heeded being told that they must give cyclists a metre's, or the imperial equivalent, clearance.
Like any coastal road, the elevation was lumpy. We seemed to spend most of our time either in our granny gear or our highest gear. As we crested one of the many pine tree scented bluffs, some random person started shouting encouragement at us. Halfway up another hill, I spotted on the crash barrier a bottle of water with a sign hanging off it that read 'for cyclists'. Whilst waiting for Sharon to exit the hippy Manzanita Fresh Food market, a soccer coach limped across the car park yelling 'right on man' and gave us snacks and bottles of Gatorade. There was a lady in a food bank that offered us hot water and toilets and this was all on day one. Unbeknown to us, this beautiful hospitality of the unknown white stranger was to become our new normal.
Bang on tea time we arrived at the end of a nasty wee climb and our hosts in Nehalem. Their home was full of interesting hippy stuff. Our room for some reason had straw in it and the lounge was full of beehives in the process of being painted. We were fed an organic vegan bean stew with homemade blueberry alcoholic cider. Pacific Oregon was all very weird and gloriously otherworldly. I loved it and no doubt if I had stayed there a few more weeks, I too would have been wearing Birkenstocks.
The next day we continued south on 101, up and down hills, in and out of tunnels and rain. We rested at beachside picnic tables and received encouragement from random strangers. Our legs were fresh, it was all very pleasant and somehow didn't seem like the real thing. We had this sense that America was lurking round the corner somewhere. Surely the whole country wasn't wildly left wing and eating non GMO food.
That evening we snuck in to a closed campground hoping to pitch our tent and hang our bear bag in some quiet spot, only to discover that we were to share the spot with other cyclists. This was our first night in our new Big Agnes tent and it was both quiet and peaceful.
Day 3 of 136 is where the riding started. Our first stop was a gorgeous Farmer's Market in Neskowin. This was another hippy-hive full of organic people buying and selling organic food. Most of them smelt like sea salt and pine needles. We purchased Sea Bass for lunch. The town also had something that we had learned to value even more than the ocean, vegans and kind motorists - it had public toilets and thus a place to fill our water bottles.
On the way out of town we stopped at a Convenience Store. Unfortunately Tillamook cheese is a lot cheaper than healthier local hippy cheese. Whilst Sharon was in the shop, I stumbled across the first of many racing cyclists. These women and men were racing unsupported across the country. The first of them had taken five hours to cover what we had done in three days. And we had thought we were hard core!
Just out of Neskowin we turned on to the Old Scenic Highway 101. It was beautiful, carless and quite a climb. The road was damp, steep and slightly rough. We listened to the sound of waterfalls and birdsong. I enjoyed being able to ride beside Sharon and chat our way through the moss covered pine trees. We tackled our first serious switchbacks. I passed the time by pretending I was Alberto Contador on EPO, however the only drugs we were taking was peanut butter on scuzzy English muffins.
As we cycled up the hill we were overtaken by many racing cyclists. Being slightly bored I screamed out encouragement to all of them. Some were in the zone and ignored me, some nodded and raced on, whilst others rode alongside for a chat. We were grateful for these happy people.
Before long we had summited and had found ourselves sitting at a picnic table, cooking our fish in front of the Otis Fire Station. Back out on the road the cycle race continued, but bizarrely enough they were all missing the left turn in front of us and instead were opting to ride across a bridge before doubling back to correct their mistakes. I spent much of our lunch break hollering “turn left, turn left”. A couple obeyed, most looked down at their GPS confused whilst drifting past the intersection before performing sudden U-turns in the middle of the bridge. It was cheap entertainment for me.
We spent the night in the truck-mud-racing yeehaa RV Park of Rose Lodge. It was our first open campground experience and rather much so a step down from European or Kiwi motor camps. Still, at least our tent was clean and our bicycles came with a kitchen.
In the morning we found ourselves stuck on some type of mountain pass with every kind of vehicle hurtling down it. The scenery wasn't much, the day wasn't happy and the roads weren't flash. We rode right through our planned stopping place of Grande Ronde. We accidentally found ourselves on an unpleasant dual carriageway before turning on to the 22 and heading over the hill towards Monmouth. We slowed and stopped in front of the rather dishevelled Rickreall convenience store. The plan was to ask about camping and if there was nothing, buy an ice-cream and sail on. Being Sunday evening we also had in the back of our mind attending a lovely lively tie-died hippy church.
Just as I was about to dismount my bike, a man who can only really be described as a tired brown polyester clad travelling vacuum cleaner salesman opened the door and walked right on up to us. He was brash and was enthusiastically spouting the virtues of his President, the Donald Trump. Like us, I can only presume he was in some kind of culture shock and we two healthy looking cyclists were the last straw that threw him into his diatribe. In shock we listened, never dismounted and as soon as he had finished, terrified we jumped back on our saddles and got the hell out of Dodge. We barely noticed the independent cycle path flying underneath us as we escaped this vicious and zealous Trumpite all the way to the University town of Monmouth.
Monmouth was a beautiful flat treelined overgrown village. We randomly stopped two men, who I think were a gay Mormon couple, on the street and asked if they knew of any churches that were open and on an outside chance if they knew of a place to camp. They immediately got on the phone and called their Christian friends, who jumped in their car and drove the block or so to find us. We were also quickly joined by a home owner and a random kid on a bicycle. Together on the street corner they made numerous phone calls with the result being no open churches this evening. Then the Christian openly stated that he would call Martha (not her real name) because she welcomed in strangers.
Two minutes later the Christians were driving down the street and we were frantically cycling behind them, being led to Martha's house. Martha and her husband allowed us to pitch our tent in their yard, use their shower and invited us to their neighbours for a BBQ. We spent a very pleasant evening under high leafy trees, in front of a fire enjoying multi-syllabled conversation.
The following day was a short one south, down the rather uninteresting fertile Willamette Valley. We were mostly on flat quiet roads, which meant we arrived quite early in Corvallis. We stopped on the outside of town, plugged 'supermarket' into our GPS and started heading to a Trader Joe's. On the way a lovely lady stopped us and offered her backyard for camping. We were actually a little peopled out, so explained that we were going to camp down by the river. Outside the market I was once again accosted by interested exciting people. They pretty much formed a line and then one by one proceeded in asking me the same questions. I was relieved and slightly agitated when Sharon reappeared from the shop. We had a quick lunch in a town park. Sharon disappeared to a chemist, I sat under a peaceful tree and read my book.
I was startled back into the present by a very quiet voice gently asking me where were we camping? I explained that we planned on spending a quiet night down by the river. The person introduced himself as Peace, he had to say it a few times before I worked out that his name was actually Peace, as in peace like a river or world peace. He explained that the river campsite had been cleared because it had been taken over by homeless people, however we were welcome to camp in his backyard. Though we would have preferred to be alone, we were very grateful.
So when Sharon returned, the three of us saddled up and cycled to the southern edge of town to join Peace and his wife for the evening. Much to my delight, Peace lived in a straw-bale house with a genuine compost toilet. We pitched our tent in the backyard roughly between the ducks and the chickens and settled in.
Somewhere during the evening's vegan conversation, it was announced that they had had cyclists hoisted upon them by a friend and that they would call him and return the favour. Next thing we know, the following night's bed was all sorted.
We had a peaceful though slightly paltry sleep amongst the poultry. Were fed yet another vegan meal before being shipped off to a health food store. It was kind of serial, four of us cycling to the health food store, being joined by other cyclists on city bikes all pelotoning along a narrow bike lane.
The shop was great, this is the place that I first discovered 'grind-your-own' peanut butter. However Mrs Peace was having way too much fun and kept enthusiastically delaying our departure. After stopping and buying a phone mount for my handlebars, we left town much much later than we would have preferred. Our stop for second breakfast was five minutes out of town on the other side of the rather pleasant and slightly boring Willamette River.
The rest of the day was pretty forgettable. It was flat and hot. We stopped at some religious group and purchased strawberries, but other than that we just overheated and got cranky.
Eugene seemed like a lovely place packed full of cycle paths, so many of them that we actually managed to get lost. Everything was lush and green and right on the river, it would have been beautiful if we had had the time to enjoy it. We were told we had to be at Peace's friend's place at five o'clock, the riding was technical city riding and we were being forced to ride almost 13 kilometres more than expected. Did I say we were grumpy? We got lost following Google through the university and when we eventually found the right street, we cycled at least two blocks past where we were supposed to stay. All in all, it was a miserable afternoon.
It turned out that we were staying at a hippy commune. We were given a room with a soft bed and an ensuite. I was struggling though, struggling with the seemingly obvious fact that so far all Americans seem to be vegan. For tea, I had the choice of eating tofu or polenta. I knew tofu, it is what the dogs leave on the lawn after their night's wandering. Polenta was an unknown, I presumed it didn't have meat in it, but I gave it a shot. It was the same colour and flavour as everything else I had eaten over the last week; brown and cardboardish. I had dried sausage in my pannier, but was too scared to munch on it, just in case the meat police jumped on me and kicked us out of our lovely room.
I shouldn't be mean, there is an inner-hippy in me and I got married in linen trousers.
The final day of our first leg was short, pleasant and steep. In order to keep off major roads, we took a quiet mountain, or at least large hill, pass. It was steep enough for Sharon to jump off and push and was a lovely climb through a pine needled high-end residential suburb. The descent was quick and a little hair-raising. At the bottom of the hill I stopped at a frontage road intersection to wait for Sharon. A local pulled up beside me and said, 'the road here is as dangerous as hell, fast, furious and with a lot of bends. Many people get killed on this road. I'm just tellin ya'.
This was a great encouragement to me. Hippies don't talk like this and if he lives down this road, then there is probably meat down there. We took care, bunched up and salivated on towards Cottage Grove.
Cottage Grove was a quaint village nestled in a valley. It took us no time at all from arriving in the town to finding our friends Mike and Darla's home. Within five minutes of stepping off the bike Mike informed me that we were having a barbecue for tea. It was too much to hope for and a fitting conclusion to the end of our first leg. We felt like we had achieved something.
We were way peopled out when we arrived, yet somehow though we spent plenty of time with Mike, Darla and Mike's mum Juanita, we finished our break with them feeling very refreshed. Mike took us to see every covered bridge in the area, we stocked up with supplies from a few shops and even had time to go out for meat, beer and country music. The singer Bob was excited to hear we were from Aotearoa, he had once sung with the world-famous-in-New-Zealand Suzanne Prentice. A fact that I am sure that no one else in the world cares about.
Our time in Cottage Grove was a little too short, but we left with full bellies and revived spirits. West Coast hippy Oregon was a fun microcosm full of generous, kind people and very little meat.