Oregon Coast Ride

Oregon Ride in August 2007
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We had planned to ride to Canada to visit CL’s grand parents for the weekend, but they had something come up that ended those plans. We did not really want to stay at home for the weekend and do nothing or do house work. We decided to ride down the Oregon coast, stay the night in Portland, then come back for a hike around Mount Saint Helens. The “Scenic Coastal highway” highway 101 was a huge disappointment. We started on the coastal highway in Washington around Centralia and rode down the coast into Oregon about 20 miles south of Tillamook. We rode about 170 miles along the coast, and we saw about 5 miles or real ocean. The rest of the ride was inland with trees to our side. The bridge into Astoria and the cheesiness of Tillamook made the coastal ride brilliant for me. For the most part, it was a very nice ride. We ended up a Hilton hotel in Lake Oswego with empty bellies at a bit past 8 in the evening. We walked across the parking lot to “the nicest restaurant we’ve been to a long time” said CL. We were both in our riding scrubs and not looking all the proper, but we had a good dinner. No drinks, no deserts, no appetizers, I am sure that the restaurant hated us. We likes the place the atmosphere was good and so was the food; it was called Stanford’s.
In the morning, we met up with Bob Hicky for breakfast. Bob said that it seemed that the restaurant was offering free breakfast. Actually, Bob treated; I think that it had to do with his excitement over getting a real job, with a real paycheck. Thanks for Breakfast Bob! After breakfast the rain started to come down, thankfully, it was not a huge downpour, but it will still enough to put a damper on our plans to hike. To help deal with the rain and CL having a bit thinner blood then me; that makes her a bit colder then me, we went to a local bike shop and got CL some nice riding pants. Warm legs made for a much happier CL. From the bike shop, we rode up to Mount Saint Helens, and then spent the next 4 hours riding around the Mountain. It was a great ride along some brilliant curvy roads. Even though we did not totally enjoy the curves due to wetness on the roadways, we still loved it. In all of those 4 hours, we did not see the mountain once, due to badly placed roads, and poor weather conditions.
We had Dinner at a place called Roses in Spanaway, and got home at about 9:00. It was a nice little ride that lacked in scenery and hiking; we managed some great conversations about many things, such as; how we would survive attacks from bears, sharks, Parana, badgers and what not in our riding suits, or what the levels and controls on the handlebars of the motorcycle do. Next time we go for a hike we do a real hike, next time we go for a scenic ride we get more scenery. I think that we will do this by getting some more research in before the trip. On the good side the total trip cost us a bit less then 80$ before you add in the pants. Not bad for fuel, hotel, and food on a 700 mile ride.
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