Austin and his fam are awesome people. We all slept in till 10-11a and his mom had breakfast ready the three mornings I was there. Oatmeal and toast the first day, fried potatoes, sausage, and Froot Loops the second day, and hard-boiled eggs, bacon, and more toast the third day.

Austin and I finally got organized on the first morning and headed out to see some of the local sights. We cruised around in town a bit, checking out the newly renovated Old Mill district, which used to be a saw mill I think. Next up was a drive roughly 20mins out of town to Mount Bachelor. We tried to finagle a free ride up the lift for a better view but no luck. We were both too cheap to pay the $16 fare. There are several excellent skiing mountains within 30 mins or so of Bend. We made our way back to the house to change and collect more people so we could all head north to Steel Head Falls. What an awesome place! It's a state park I believe that doesn't require you to park and you're free to what you want (except build fires.) A short hike is all it took to get to the falls. We spent about three hours there jumping into the cold mountain water that felt oh-so-good after baking in the summer sun. We lunched there too and had an all-around great time. I was sad to leave =(

The biggest day so far for sure. Also the most challenging. Also also the first time I've set an alarm to get up on this trip since day 1! What? Yes, I set an alarm for around 5:15am because I wanted to leave the Huts House around 6am to give myself plenty of time to make it to Bend and to have some time to take breaks, eat, etc.

True to form, I stayed up too late the night before (I was blogging... you're welcome) so when the alarm sounded, I hit snooze and rolled over for an extra hour. I hadn't packed my bike at all either so by the time I got organized and ate breakfast, I didn't get out of there until around 7:45. It was a really cold morning, like all the other Portland mornings had been and I had to wear pants and my rain jacket as a wind-breaker. I rode about an hour before I started sweating too much in my garb and shed my extra layers...

I got up around 10:30a and headed down to the kitchen to begin the onslaught on the "All you can make" pancake breakfast provided by the hostel. Someone had left a bag of fresh blackberries on the counter and were free for anyone to use. So I made 4 regular pancakes and 4 with blackberries. The berry ones were better if you had to know. While chowing down, I sorted out my plan of attack for the day which was to include the Chinese Gardens, the Rose Test Gardens, the Chris King Factory, Powell's Book Store, and the infamous VooDoo Doughnuts. All these stops were about 1-2 miles apart from each other, so getting to them was pretty quick and simple.

I didn't mention that the night before I left for Portland, I was working on were to stay in the city. After a night of fitful sleep, I got up and I still hadn't found a place to stay. It was worrying me a little more than a little bit. I had put out a bunch of last minute messages on Warm Showers (a site like CouchSurfing but for cyclists) after finding out that the few friend-of-friend leads weren't going to work. I also called the few hostels in town to see if they had any space and unfortunately they didn't... at that moment. One of them told me to call back around noon and as luck would have it, they had an opening! I reserved it as fast as possible and felt infinitely better about the day. Skirted that one. Phew.

On to Tillamook! That can only mean one thing... cheese! But I'll get to that later.

Back at camp, I started hearing my new neighbors rustling around about 8am. I rolled over again and eventually got up around 9:30. We chatted a little as I woke up and started getting my stuff together. Turned out they were another couple doing the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) route as well. I finally got everything packed and such and left around 11a. I rolled back down to the beach to bag some sand for mom's sand collection and to take one final look at this magnificent coast...

Yaniv's friend has recommended we go to a local place in town for breakfast but since he's a morning person and got up at like 6:45am, I bailed on him. I just couldn't get out of bed. So I slept for another couple hours. In all honestly, I needed some alone time and a break from his incessant talking. I did eventually get up slowly though around 9:30am as the campground was packing up. I did the normal not-quite-awake things like go to the bathroom, wander around, rub your eyes for 20 minutes, etc. I also paid for another night's stay. I gathered a few things after that and rode into town for breakfast at another location of the Pign'Pancakes restaurant. It's like a local, slightly-better-than-IHOP kind of a place. I charged my phone while I ate in order to let the outside world I was still alive...

Astoria to be honest isn't much to write home about. The views are nice but the town itself is much smaller than anticipated and it looked tired. It's claim to fame is that the movie "The Goonies" was filmed there but according to Yaniv, that was really the only thing of note on his trolley tour of the town.

In the morning, we got moving slowly and eventually headed to SafeWay to get a few things. The ride the day before was hot as crap and though I used a ton of sunscreen and wan't burned, my face felt like it was on fire, which made it hard to sleep the night prior and so I picked up some aloe and lotion along with some salty cheese n cracker snacks at the store. I also stopped at the local bike shop to get some chain lube since I didn't bring any (I thought UPS might not like me sending that)...

Actual Distance Ridden: 37.74 miles

Time: 2 hours, 57 mins.

Average Speed: 12.7 mph

The morning at the KOA site came pretty quick and the KAW-ing of the crows even sooner. Around 6am, three crows perched in a tree above my tent simply went to town announcing to the world that it was day time. It may have been daytime, but it certainly wasn't "get up" time. I actually did get up around 8:30 when it got too hot to stay in my tent. It was this moment that I met a guy named Yaniv, an Israeli transplant to Vancouver who was doing a bike tour also but down the Pacific Coast. A nice and very talkative guy, we would wind up meeting again later that day in Astoria. After I got packed up, I wandered down the path to the coast with my bike to put my wheel in the water as a very cliché official start to my cross-country journey. The irony is that it was low tide and there was practically no water at all, just a mile of mud/sand that was too thick to really ride though...

Actual Distance Ridden: 94.92 miles

Ride Time: 8 Hours, 24 mins.

Average Speed: 11.2 mph

As I noted before in Day1, I was woken up at the fire house to all number of fire drills and other firefighter activities. I got up, planned the route, packed and headed on without much pomp and circumstance at all. Basically a wave goodbye to and from the firefighters as I hopped on my bike...

Map Revision: Seattle > Fire District Six, Station Four: 89.30 Miles
(Revised map below the break)