After traveling inland through Washington, we wound our way west and crossed the Columbia river into Oregon, connecting with the official signed Oregon Coast Bike Route in Astoria. This route winds south, mostly along Highway 101, for 592 km (368 miles) to Brookings — where we’ll pass through tomorrow and head into California! We have truly been blessed with beautiful weather – for most of our days here in Oregon the sun has shown brightly on us, and we have encountered very little of the rain we were expecting. While the temperatures have been cool (highs of 10-14 ºC or 50-57 ºF and lows of around 2 ºC or 36 ºF), we are acclimating and now quite comfortable to the point of stripping off some layers to play in parks and beaches in the afternoons, both of which are pretty deserted this time of year.
We took seeing this rainbow as another sign that the sunny weather we are getting during this time of year is unusual.
I had always assumed the coastal route would be rather flat, seeing as it follows the ocean. However, as any other cyclist will attest, it is anything but flat – constantly going either up or down, and weaving in and out with peaks of peaceful mossy forests and lookouts over stunning rocky beaches and capes in between. While there are no Colorado-style climbs over mountain passes, on any particular day we see numerous hills over 500ft, and every once in a while spin up to around 1000ft elevation.
