Village Clinic Ride Days 8 & 9: A Day of Rest and Goodbye to Washington
Riding from Westport, WA to Astoria OR. In the background is a 4 mile bridge that crosses the Columbia river to Astoria.
Day 8: Rest Day
We woke up and our legs screamed “No more! We need a rest!” So we listened to our legs and decided to take a rest day. We rode our bikes around town enough to get groceries and do laundry, but no more.
We did, however, take a car ride with a friend to the city of Olympia to buy a few supplies. The car ride was about an hour each way. After spending a week traveling by bicycle, it felt surreal to barrel along the highway at 60 mph, immune to both the winds and hills, and in a climate that we controlled from a dashboard. Modern technology and the internal combustion engine have allowed us to escape the hardships of travel that humans have always had to negotiate. If nothing else, bicycle touring gives you some perspective on how easy we have it, and how hard it is for those who don’t live with such conveniences.
Day 9: Raymond WA to Astoria OR
We’re in Oregon! Goodbye Washington, we’ll miss you! The last leg of our journey was the easiest. It came after a rest day and the weather couldn’t have been better: overcast with occasional light rain and a steady tailwind. The terrain on highway 101 consisted of rolling hills, which we both agreed was preferable to the long flat stretches. There was a steady stream of traffic for most of the ride, so we didn’t chat much. Aside from lunch in the small town of Naselle, we didn’t talk to any locals. We just kept pedaling and enjoying the beautiful scenery, until we reached the Astoria-Megler Bridge.
Spanning 4 miles across the Columbia River, the bridge is impressive and intimidating. We’d read about the challenges it poses to cyclists, and those accounts are entirely accurate. There is a shoulder, but it’s limited, and there is not a lot of room for error. Fortunately (for us), the bridge was under construction, which led to periodic delays in car traffic. We had some stretches with no cars at all, and we could enjoy the views and admire the sea birds swooping by our heads. We also met a lovely traffic worker who took pity on us and stopped car traffic for an extra three minutes so we could get through the last stretch of the bridge traffic-free.
And then we were in Oregon, happy, hungry, and tired. We went to the store and bought way too much food. A tip for saving money: don’t go grocery shopping right after a 60-mile bike ride.