One down, many to go

Well, Day 1 is in the books.  Lots more to come...
leaving the hotel, starting our journey
Any path of a thousand miles begins with a first step.  Well, this journey of over 4,000 miles started with our first day on the bikes.  We started at the Hampton Inn (thanks Abby) where we dragged in our big bike boxes, ordered pizza, and put these things back together again.  Ending up with only a few extra parts, the bikes went together pretty well.  Bike boxes were deposited in the hotel dumpster, and we were ready to go.  We started out by calling and trying to confirm the status of the road openings of the Nestucca River road going from Portland to the coast.   This road avoids route 6, a major route with major amounts of traffic and little road shoulders.  After multiple tries, messages left, websites visited, and even some messages returned, we came to the conclusion - we still don't know.  Based on this (lack of) information we made the choice to simply take the bus to the starting point of our journey in Tillamook, near the coast, and meet up with the Trans-America Trail.
Portland's Union Station
Bikes on the bus

We left the hotel and headed toward Union Station in the downtown area, about a 9 mile trip through Portland.  Surprisingly we didn't find any feminist bookstores or artisinal string knot shops, but did see a few hipsters on the way.  Union Station is beautiful, and there we found the Tillamook bus, where we bought tickets and mounted the bikes to the front of the bus.  About 90 minutes later we landed in Tillamook, just about ready to go.  After a Mexican food truck Chalupa, we were set.  Finally we had met up with the Trans-America Trail, and set up the app to take us to the coast, and eventually, Virgina.  
We left for the coast and found the roads to be pretty good, and the scenery good as well.  Most of the area around Tillamook is farmland and dairy, supporting the Tillamook cheese industry.  The road quickly got worse, more decayed, and we found ourselves on the first major incline on a road that was not much more than rubble.  Thank goodness for sturdy tires - my normal bike tires would have been shredded by these roads, but these took it well.  The hills were up and down for a while, until a major incline up to a place called Cape Lookout, looking over the Pacific.  This hill, which seemed to go on forever for my out-of-shape legs, was really less than a thousand foot incline.  From that point on my legs were rubber.  I was okay on the flats and lovely downhills, but my climbing skills were spent.  We stopped in a town called Pacific City, and continued on toward our night's destination. 

The Pacific Ocean in, where else, Pacific City

May 29th is the first day that the coast would be open for business after the virus lockdown, so it was a given that this would be a busy weekend.  Knowing this, we figured we had to reserve a room somewhere.  Using the Adventure Cycling app on the Tillamook bus, I found a little town called Neskowin, on the ocean, and approximately the distance we thought we could cover.  I called about 4 places before finding one that had a vacancy.  Unfortunately they have an in-season minimum of 2 nights' stay, so we were forced to pay for 2 nights, whether we used them or not.  Looking at the forecast, it was supposed to be a 100% chance of rain for the next day, with heaviest showers coming in the area we were headed.  More by chance than by great planning, we found a great spot to stop and wait out the rain.  Neskowin is a really nice little beachside community, lots of small, well-kept cottages, happy people and happy dogs.  They have a few restaurants, one of which actually had sit-down dining, and a general store with food and take-out.  This turned out to be a gem of a find, completely by the luck of a phone call.

It seems kind of early to be taking a day's rest, but after the leg-shredding hills I faced, plus the 100% chance of being soaked to the bone with nowhere to stay, I think we made the wise strategic decision to rest on day 2.  Day 3 will be a turn in from the coast and a trip back through the coastal range headed for Salem.  I'll let you know how that turns out.  

Rest Day in Neskowin, in front of Proposal Rock

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