Today was Alissa’s favorite day of the trip so far! So much ocean and such cute beachy towns!
We woke up to gray skies and rain. We expected to have rain on this trip and were surprised it took this long to have a wet day. But, the Internet told us the rain would stop at 8 am, so we walked to a coffee shop to pick up breakfast snacks (including an orange cardamom morning bun for Glen, yum). We packed up our bags and were ready to go around 8:05 but it seemed Mother Nature didn’t read the memo from weather.com. Still raining. We put on our rain gear and set out.
Our first stop was the Lewis and Clark National Historic Park — the location of the fort they built for their winter in Oregon.
While we explored the fort area, the sun came out so we removed all our outer rain gear, much to the amusement of the 4th graders visiting the park with their teachers.
Next up was the coastal town of Seaside, which reminded us very much of Pismo Beach with its beachy shops, restaurants, candy stores, and other touristy spots. Before lunch we visited their bike shop.
We chatted with Joe and his 80 year-old dad who have owned and operated this shop for decades (and Joe’s grandfather owned it before that). At some point, Joe said to Alissa, “You know, when you’re going down a hill at 35 mph …” and Alissa just wanted to laugh out loud. Even when she was trying to go as fast as possible — pedaling down a hill on a closed course during a race — she maxed out around 22 mph. She can’t image going 35 mph on a bike under any circumstance. But she just nodded and let Joe continue his story. Glen got his brakes adjusted (turns out the events at Bikes and Beyond hadn’t gone as smoothly as we hoped) and we headed to the beach.
After a tasty lunch we continued our ride. Fortunately, we were on the correct route.
The next town was Cannon Beach, where Glen enjoyed a pre-dessert s’mores snack.
We ate well today — grilled salmon tacos and crab melt for lunch followed by salmon salad and oyster po-boy for dinner.
Almost to our home for the night, we had to make a brief stop.
We admit, we were too worn out to ride down (then back up) the hill to the actual Hug Point. The Internet says it’s really quite the spot during low tide. We’ll have to come back another time.
The views from the road between Hug Point and our home for the night were really spectacular.
After a long day, we finally arrived at the home we rented and Alissa decided she never wanted to leave.
