Day 447
Smoked
We started the day on the 101, we weren’t alone, lots of traffic made for a fairly miserable morning. At lunch time we pulled into Aberdeen, we were thinking of stopping and when we looked at the texts from the UK we decided we would. Queen Elizabeth II had died. We both felt quite emotional, and neither was in the mood to continue. We booked into a motel and sat glued to the TV for news from home, later in the evening we decided to pop out for a drink to celebrate her life. The barmaid at the Irish Pub was lovely, full of questions about our Royal family.
We set off early the following day, back on the 101 and we again battled with the traffic, though we were treated to a free display of classic cars which we heading to a rally at Long Beach, no E-types though! We also had our first experience of cycling with smoke from forest fires in the air. Nothing close by but quite an unsettling experience and boy did the photos look weird. As both of us were feeling ill we stopped early at an expensive campsite, the views made it worth while. Another first was a button to press at the entrance to tunnels. Lights flashed warning traffic to be aware of cyclists, the speed was even lowered to 30 miles an hour, fantastic!
The following morning we had a stunning ride through wetlands, more classic cars, and a challenge, the Astoria Bridge. At just over 4 miles with a narrow hard shoulder we had been warned it was going to be unpleasant. It certainly wasn’t fun but as it was a Saturday we had no logging trucks to contend with. Built in 1966 it was then the longest continuous-truss bridge in the world, what freaked us out wasn’t the length but the fact that the final mile was all uphill! We were two very happy cyclists when we got over it!
To escape the traffic we left the 101 and took a longer but virtually traffic free route through the Lewis and Clark State Park, it was all fantastic but no campsites around so we found a small copse near the Goonies rock and bedded down for the night. In the morning we headed to the park overlooking the Bay and ate breakfast with the rock as our back drop!
