West Coast Adventure - Day 15

Having a couple days "off" was just what the doctor ordered. Huge thanks to my Aunt Kay and Uncle Jim for housing me for 3 nights. I was great to spend time with you, as always!

I hit the road at about 10:30AM this morning. I wasn't in a rush, didn't need to be, and it wouldn't have mattered if I had been. There's just no rushing to or from the Oregon coast. :) If you're from "back east" like me, you tend to think of cities like Portland and Seattle as coastal cities. The reality is, they're really not on the coast. Getting to the Pacific from either of them can take anywhere from an hour to 90 minutes, or more. Just thought I should clear that up...mostly as a reminder to myself. Besides the distance, there's enough traffic that they almost don't even need to post a speed limit. You have to work around a lot of other people to draw any attention to yourself if the police are around.

The ride from Canby to Lincoln City was a great trip through the foothills, back up through the coastal range, and then down to the coast. It was a little over 90 miles, took a little over 2 hours, and I only got rained on for a few minutes up in the mountains...gotta love that 20% chance of rain. I stopped for a quick bite to eat and got back on the road.

As expected, the Oregon coast offers plenty of beautiful views and beaches. If you wanted to take a slow family vacation down the coast, it would be pretty easy to fill up a couple of weeks with all the different state parks and visitor attractions. Of course, this trip is mostly about the ride, so most of the tourist stuff barely registers on my radar as I move from one small town to the next. I did stop pretty regularly to take in the scenic vistas and grab a couple pictures of some of the various beach locations.

Depoe Bay, north

Depoe Bay, south...and foggy

Seal Rock

Seal Rock

Cooks Chasm

North end of Oregon Dunes

I mentioned, in an earlier post, that I realized, about a week into the ride, that many portions of this trip are through places that Sara and I had visited together during our marriage. One of my stops today was Depoe Bay. I recognized it, as I drove into town, because of the sea wall the shops of the city overlook. We were here in 2004. I stopped, sat on the wall for a while and did my best to remember. I also rode past the beaches where we sat and watched the seals play and where Jim and Joshua flew kites in the stiff ocean breeze. Good days, good memories. As I experience them, I realize it's OK to enjoy them, to cherish them, to keep them...and OK to look forward to making memories on my own, and possibly someday with someone else. No matter how that feels, I guess it's growth.

Only 218 miles today, but lots of stops...over 7 hours of travel time

Nearly 3,700 miles so far

 Thursday brings the redwoods, the coastal giants. I'm looking forward to seeing them again.

Tomorrow is another day and another road. :)

West Coast Adventure - Day 14

I didn't ride a single mile today and it was good. :) I spent the day be chauffeured around by my uncle. We ran up to Beaverton to pick up a luggage rack for Black Max which is going to make the rest of this trip a little more secure in terms of packing. Then headed to the big and tall shop down the road to pick up a new pair of jeans. I managed to rip mine last night...looks like they'll be shorts when I get home.

We ended up southeast of Portland and on a waterfall expedition...and ran into fire.

At first we thought they were forest fires; but, after driving around trying to get a good look at them, we finally figured out they were burning off the wheat fields after the harvest. There's a possibility that one could have been a small forest fire. When we did check out one of the waterfalls, the smoke smelled more like burning wood than the times we could clearly tell it was burning wheat.

Tomorrow is another day and another road. :)

West Coast Adventure - Day 13

Having a day off has been nice. No long ride...just resting and relaxing...sort of.

I did ride about 50 miles today. Not really a big deal. Just hit 3 more Apple stores in the Portland area. See my previous post from last Friday for more info on why I'd do that. :)

Bridgeport Village

Washington Square

Pioneer Place

Other than that, I went to the movies, ate lunch at The Cheesecake Factory, and dinner at Thai Dish. Looking forward to another quiet day and spending time with family tomorrow.

West Coast Adventure - Day 12

It's not hard for me to imagine that any trip that involves a lot of travel, and lasts for more than a few days, is bound to have at least one day that just sucks. Today might have been that day for me...only time will truly tell.

I woke up to cloudy skies and rain hovering offshore, over the Pacific. The forecast for the area indicated that any rain should be moving out by about 11:30AM and there would only be a 20% chance of rain after that. I'm flexible, so I waited. I listened to the morning service from the Spring Arbor Free Methodist Church. I showered. I packed. I took my time getting ready and it was only 10:30AM. It still hadn't rained in Hoquiam…and really didn't look like it would. I decided to head out for a late breakfast, figuring by the time I was done eating any threat of rain would surely have passed.

I got out my trusty smart phone and started searching for places that would have brunch or breakfast. The first one that caught my eye was a place called The Blue Bacon Restaurant and Lounge. WHAT!? Any place that had the word BACON in the name of the restaurant had to fantastic. It was just a few miles down the road so I packed up and headed out. I quickly learned that BEACON and BACON look really similar on my phone screen. The Blue BEACON Restaurant and Lounge was what I found…and it was clearly a dive. I decided to risk it. I'll spare you the details…it's sufficient to let you know the omelette was not the best I've ever hard, nor was it the worst I've ever had. The texas toast was slathered in real butter and was delicious. If you're ever in the Hoquiam area and feeling adventurous…and maybe a little lucky…feel free to stop in at the Blue Beacon…their bacon was actually pretty good.

By the time I got back to Black Max, it was about 12:05PM…and it was almost sprinkling. Just enough to be noticeable. Bugger. I hit the road and it actually didn't do much more than spit at me all the way from Hoquiam down to the state line…and that's when the coastal highway turned on me. You would think that after 7 years of riding a motorcycle, I would have come to understand that a 20% chance of rain means you're bound to get rain. If there was a 20% chance of something good falling out of the sky, like gold coins or puppies, nothing would ever happen. But with rain and a motorcycle, 20% might as well be 100%.

Just after 2:00PM, as I rounded the bend where 101 meets the Columbia River as it dumps into the Pacific, the coastal "drizzle" started. It's not really rain, it's not really mist. It's just wet…which, I guess, makes it rain. To make it more fun, traffic was backed up on the bridge heading into Astoria, Oregon. So, I inched along, damp and disheartened. If I'd had my wits about me, I'd have read the signs at the end of the bridge, put my liberal arts education to good use, and taken US-30 out of Astoria and directly to Portland. Instead, I took 101 all the way down to Tillamook. A ride that normally should have only taken about 90 minutes. It took almost 3 hours…and it "rained" the entire time. Traveling 101 when it's raining would probably have been bad enough. It was cold, only about 60 degrees, and the wind was blowing pretty fiercely on the parts of the highway that actually got close enough to the coast where you could see the ocean. The kicker is that it was Sunday. The day when everyone who headed to the coast for the weekend was now heading home. That's why traffic was backed up over the bridge. That's why the normal 3 minute trip through Seaside took almost 30 minutes. By the time I got to Tillamook, I had been sitting on Black Max for almost 4 hours without a break.

My original plan had been to stay on 101 all the way down to Lincoln City and then head east to Canby, to my aunt and uncle's place. The decision to take a left on 6 and head east early was not a difficult one to make.

The ride up through the Tillamook National Forest actually redeemed the day. The rain quit almost as soon as I moved away from the coast and within a few miles I was out of the danger zone. Highway 6, through the forest, is a beautiful ride. The only thing that could have made it better would have been to have the sun shining…but after 3 hours of rain, I wasn't going to complain about the dry conditions even if it was overcast. I somehow managed to find a break in traffic and the first 30 miles of the ride were spectacular. I had the mountain highway practically to myself. It was only as I was exiting the National Forest that traffic once again picked up and stayed heavy all the way to Canby.

As I rode out of the Oregon Coast Range, the overcast skies lightened and the air temperature had warmed up to around 75. By the time I got to Portland I was almost dry.

If it hadn't been for the rain today, I'd have probably actually been a little disappointed that the coastal highway doesn't really run along the shore up here. It's coastal in the sense that you're near the coast. There are only a few places where you actually get to ride close enough to the shore to see the ocean. However, having the forest between the highway and the ocean helped protect me from the wind and even some of the rain. So I welcomed those tall trees anytime I was riding through them. The ride through the Tillamook National Forest was definitely the silver lining in what could have been a completely miserable day.

I'll be hanging around Canby until Wednesday, when I'll head back to the coast…crossing my fingers and hoping for sunshine. :)

The route I planned

The route I took

3,424 miles...just a few more to go

Tomorrow is another day and another road (just not a very long one.) :)

West Coast Adventure - Day 11

3,092...miles. That's how many miles I rode, from Jackson, Michigan, before I finally saw the Pacific Ocean...

Pacific Ocean west of the Olympic National Forest, northwest coast of Washington.

...but that didn't happen until 4:30PM and almost 220 miles into today's ride.

Those of you with any mapping skills might note that it's only about 80 miles from Tacoma to Hoquiam, where I'm spending the night tonight. Of course, that's if you drive directly over via The 5, Washington 8, and US-12 (the same one that goes just south of Jackson...it's a small world.) I choose to get to Hoquiam via The 5 and The 101...which makes it nearly 305 miles. A small difference.

80 miles vs 305 miles...pick your poison. :)

3,174 miles so far and I still have to get home. :)

Taking the 101 around the peninsula that houses the Olympic National Park and the Olympic National Forest is a treat. You spend most of the day with the snow-capped Olympic Mountains in your sight. It's a long ride, but a great one for a motorcycle. Lots of sections of winding curves and twists both through the foothills and along the different bodies of water you'll travel near.

The ride north goes through the eastern foothills of the mountains and follows the fjord known as Hood Canal for quite a distance. You eventually turn westward and end up in Port Angeles, which is about the halfway point of the journey I made. It's a big enough town that you can find some decent food and plenty of places to get gas. I was a little disappointed to find that the restaurants I wanted to try didn't open until dinner time...settled for some decent Chinese instead.

Hood Canal, home of Octopus Hole

As you leave Port Angeles, you also leave the more populated section of the ride. There are several small towns on the western half of the peninsula, but far fewer than the eastern half. The most significant town on the western part of the route is Forks, Washington, which turns out is where the Twilight books are set. Plenty of Twilight buy-in as you drive through town. I saw stores selling Twilight themed native art and even a place selling Twilight firewood. If there's a buck to be made...

The western half also has some of the twistier roads. Riding around Crescent Lake was a lot of fun, especially when I could put myself in the gaps between the groups of cars.

Crescent Lake in Olympic National Park

Crystal clear waters

By the time I got down to the coast, I was ready for it. This was one of the prime objectives of the trip, traveling the coastal highways. As road followed the terrain down, the trees and other vegetation started to get more "coastal", and the temperature started to drop. I held my breath at every curve waiting to see if this would be the one where the ocean would come into view. Eventually, you know you're getting near because you can see daylight through the forest. The temperature drops even more. The road takes a turn to the south and there it is...glistening at you through the trees...the Pacific. Admittedly, the northern coastal highways aren't going to offer the most scenic views, but they are nice. You're mostly up on the cliffs, with the beach a hundred feet or more below you. There are often trees between the road and the edge of the cliff, which means you'll only get your best views where the cliffs have eroded back toward the road and the trees are no longer in the way. I'll have three more days of riding the 101 before I get down to the Pacific Coast Highway in California, and I'll have  a few days in the middle of those two while I visit with my aunt and uncle outside of Portland.

As fun as today's ride was, I also came to realize a couple of other things. First, there's just no way I can fit all the things I want to see into the time I have left. I've decided I'm just going to have to skip the trip up to Yellowstone after I'm done along the coast. I'd only have 2 days to see the park and I think it deserves more attention than that. The silver lining is this gives me a reason to come back out this way some other time...but maybe in a car...or on a plane. :)

The other thing I realized is that some parts of this trip really may be part of the "saying goodbye" process. As I sat on the edge of the cliff, warming myself in the afternoon sun, watching the seals play in the surf, I remembered Sara was with me the last time I walked on our nation's western shore. We were together and happy. I'm going to be riding by the beach where that memory lives in about four days. We saw the redwoods together about 13 years ago, I'll be there next week. It occurs to me that many of the places I've ridden in the past year have those memory ties...and there are getting to be fewer and fewer of them. Maybe subconsciously, I'm letting go by visiting, on my own, the locations/trips/places we enjoyed together. The memories being stirred on this trip are happy ones, yet painful to relive. I know that by now I shouldn't be surprised at the power and quickness of grief...but I sometimes am, caught unaware when I least expect it.

Tomorrow is another day and another road. :)

West Coast Adventure - Day 10

A day of rest....riiiiiiight. :)

I woke up this morning without a riding agenda. I've ridden enough miles to warrant an oil change and service check, so the biggest agenda item of the day was taking care of that. I was smart enough to plan this out and my hotel is less than a mile from the dealership I was going to drop Black Max off at to have the work done. Yay for walking!

As luck would have it, the hotel is also just a few doors down from a shop that repairs eyeglasses. Lucky, you ask? I managed to do yesterday morning what I'd been threatening to do for 8 straight days. I broke my glasses. I have to take them off when I put my helmet on or take it off. This usually involves setting them down on top of my travel bags until the helmet is either on or off and then putting them back on. I have, on more than one occasion on this trip, put my helmet on, gotten on the bike and driven off with my glasses sitting on top of the bags behind me. The shortest distance I've made it before remembering this is just a few feet, the longest was several miles. As I was preparing to leave Spokane yesterday, I remembered while I was still in the parking lot...but...in the process of stopping to retrieve them, the glasses slide forward, off the bags, onto the ground, right where I then proceeded to put my foot. Broken glasses ensued. So, on my walk back to the hotel I noticed this shop that said they repair glasses, I figured I'd give it a shot. $69 dollars and a few drops of solder later, I'm back in business. :) The true challenge is figuring out how to prevent this from happening again...stay tuned...

While Black Max was getting lubed and checked, I decided I'd stop at the local grocery store to pick up some snacks. Pal-Do World is right across the street from the shop where I'd dropped my glasses off, so I popped on in to see what I could see. I should have known I was in for a fun experience when the only thing I could actually read on the store sign were the words "Pal-Do World." Everything else was written in what I believe may have been Korean. The only area I really ran into issues was in the "salty" snacks. Most of the bags didn't have much English on them. The two words that were in English that kept popping up were prawn and shrimp...I've had prawn/shrimp flavored snacks before and I knew I didn't want any today. I finally found a small bag of some kind of chocolate puff, some wasabi rice crackers, dried mango, and candied tamarind. I've never had tamarind before, but it looked tasty. I also picked up a couple Granny Smith apples...there was no language barrier in figuring out what those were. :)

By the time I got back to the hotel, I was feeling a bit peckish, so, I cracked open that bag of tamarind to see what it was I'd bought. I popped one of the pods into my mouth and bit down, quickly realizing this wasn't going to be the way to eat candied tamarind.  The candid flesh is sugary, soft, and chewy. The seeds inside the pod are as hard as rocks. I'm glad I didn't break a tooth. Turns out you eat what you can and spit the seeds in the trash. Not the kind of "candy" you'd serve at a posh dinner party, but no one cares if you spit seeds in the trash in your hotel room. :) If I ever run across candied tamarind while shopping back home, I might actually buy some...it's not bad, really...it's high in B vitamins and calcium. Who needs milk when you can eat tamarind?

I got the call at about 1:00 that Black Max was all ready to go. So I hiked back to the dealship to pick him up. Now all I had to do was figure out what to do with the rest of the day. I had plans to meet my cousin, Jonathon, and his wife for dinner at about 6:30, so I now had 5 hours to roam the greater Seattle area. It didn't take me long to come up with a plan. Did you know there are 5 Apple Stores in the greater Seattle area? Now you do...and I visited every one of them.
No, this doesn't have to make sense to you. It's just something I like doing. It's also something my friend Jason likes doing...and now I've got 5 more stores on my list than he does. :) In my list of Apple stores that I've visited, these five are numbers 19 to 23. In some cases just finding the store is a challenge in and of itself. Driving around in a large, unfamiliar city can be challenging. One way streets that don't make sense, streets that aren't always labeled the same in real life as they are on the internet, etc., etc., etc. In the end, it took me over four and a half hours to get to each store and actually walk in and look around. If you don't walk in and look around it doesn't actually count as a visit. Besides, it can be fun to see what accessories the varying stores carry. I'm noticing a lot designer phone cases and golfing accessories out here that you don't see in the stores back home.

After visiting the last Apple store, I headed back into Seattle to visit Jonathon and Nicole. It was good to see them, spend a little time catching up, and enjoying some great fellowship over Pad Thai, Red Curry, and Chinese sausage salad.

So, the big question is, how many miles can one rack up traipsing from one Apple Store to another in a metropolitan area like this.  The answer is 132.

Tomorrow will come early (it's actually already tomorrow...I should get to bed) and it will be the day I finally get to see the Pacific coast.

Tomorrow is another day and another road. :)

West Coast Adveture - Day 9

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

I saw it all today...well...I saw a lot.

I saw amber waves of grain.

I saw purple mountains majesties.

I saw the fruited plain.

I saw America...and I'm exhausted.

I met John at 8:30AM this morning for breakfast. We're both members of the Volusia Riders. Neither one of us rides a Volusia any more...truth be told, there are many people on the site who no longer have, or ride, a Volusia (or Boulevard)...but once you're a part of the family you're a part of the family. John lives in Spokane, Washington, had the day off work today, and decided he'd join me for the ride to Seattle.

Riding out of Spokane, one finds oneself quickly back on the plains...only, it's not the same plains as the middle of the country. For one, you can see the mountains to the west most of the time you're riding through them. It's also not as "flat" as the plains states. There were hills through North Dakota and Montana, too, but these hills were bigger, more pronounced, you noticed them...and it made it seem a lot less "flat." There were also dust devils. I don't recall seeing a single dust devil as I traveled through the Great Plains. I saw lots of them today. At one point, there was a relatively large one cruising across the open fields to our south and west, while at the same time I counted at least a dozen smaller ones in the open acreage around it. I've never actually seen a true dust devil before today...cool. :)

US-2 just keeps chugging along through the amber waves of grain until you reach Coulee City. I got another nice surprise there...canyons. Not valleys...actual canyons. We were scooting along, right as rain, and all of a sudden US-2 starts to drop. It's like the fields just open up and the road starts going down into this unknown chasm. Then, without warning, you come around a curve in the road and there's the canyon, right in front of you. Steep walls jutting up on either side and a ribbon of highway that shoots down to the canyon floor and up through a break in the walls on the other side. This was an unexpected piece of scenery, to say the least.

Outside Coulee City - click the picture to see a larger version

Once you rise up out of the canyons, you're back in the foothills of the coastal mountains. The ride through them was exhilarating and over almost too quickly. If anyone from out east is up for it, I'd love to fly out to Seattle next spring or fall and take US-2 from Seattle, WA, to Kalispell, MT, and back again over the course of a week. I'm not sure there's any other place in the United States of America where you can see plains, canyons, mountains, rivers, lakes, streams, forests, big cities, small cities, and no cities all in just about 600 miles on one road. US-2, from western Montana to western Washington is America in a nutshell. About the only thing missing was swamp...and I didn't miss that. :)

One thing I haven't missed in my nine days of riding has been traffic. There have been a few times when I found myself amongst some other vehicles, but nothing close to what we ran into when we got to Seattle. It was about 5:00PM when John and I got onto the highway east of the city. 65 miles later, and over 90 minutes of fighting typical Seattle rush hour traffic, I finally made it to my hotel. The only thing left on the agenda for the night was to get some dinner...and for that I got to meet another great person with a Volusia Riders tie, Julie. I got to enjoy a few hours with her this evening as she gave me a quick tour of Steilacoom and treated me to dinner at the Steilacoom Pub & Grill.

As I got closer and closer to Seattle today, my thoughts started to become more introspective.

This trip does have meaning to me, in ways both known and unknown, regardless of what may have been posted earlier in the journey. This isn't a trip one takes just because it was there to be taken, at least that's not the only reason. For me, one known aspect of this journey is that the seeds for the trip were planted in 1994. Back then, my friends, Jason and Bryan, and I were supposed to drive out to Seattle via US-2 for our friend Jeremy's wedding. It's a trip that was well intentioned but never happened; however, I always wish it had. Instead, I flew out while Jason and Bryan took the Greyhound. If you ever get a chance to hear them talk about sharing a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter for three days...it's a story worth listening to. There's a part of me that takes great pride in making the journey, by myself, while at the same time it's an accomplishment that's diminished because Jason and Bryan didn't get to share in it.

As the miles fade into the road behind me, the unknown becomes more clear. Traveling like this helps me to both escape the reality of my life...and bring me face to face with it. There are still days when I feel like a stranger in my own skin. Days when I look in the mirror and simply don't recognize the person staring back at me. Days when I just want things to be the way they should have been, not the way they are. As I traveled US-2 today, I was reminded that I can't run away from that reality. It hit home hard at the point where US-2 runs into the Columbia River and heads south before turning back west and following the Wenatchee River up into the mountains. Sara and I had driven the highway on the other side of that river just a few years ago. We had flown out to spend a week with her sister at her sister's in-law's home near Lake Chelan. The next hour of the trip was a blur as I remembered that vacation. Our time together. That we'd driven back to Seattle early to celebrate our anniversary. Memories. I can't run away from the memories, from the reality that they are all that I have left.

The evening finds me exhausted. It was long day of riding and an even longer day emotionally.

Spokane to Tacoma - 340 miles of some of the best riding I've ever experienced

2,500+ miles and still rolling