A really really long day - Day 9 - Epic Motorcycle Ride

Sunday, July 22, 2012 @ 7:00 PM in 2012 Epic Motorcycle Ride

Last night we drank most of the booze and had some dinner and got our fire going pretty well. I think we both slept pretty well and fortunately it didn't rain on us through the night.

We woke up and did our daily routine of eating, tearing down camp and packing up our bikes. We were on the road by 6:45am. We had to carry our trash out of the park and find the nearest trash can. Next up was fueling up. We still had quite a few miles on the current tank so we wanted to fill up sooner rather than later. We didn't see any gas stations near the park so we had to go about 4 miles out of the way to get some gas. After that we were finally on our way down the coast on Highway 101.

The plan was to head town the 101 until we got to Highway 26 and then take that to Portland where we would ride through the Columbia River Gorge and see some of the sights along the way. When we neared our exit for 26 I saw that Cannon Beach was just a few miles away and wanted to go see it. It had been really foggy and cold and when we pulled up to the beach the view was a little obstructed but it was still cool.

We set off on 26 and after some more rain/fog we finally started to make it to Portland. Riding 30 along the gorge was awesome. There were some highly trafficked spots since it was the weekend, but overall it was a nice pleasant ride. We got to see some cool waterfalls along the way. We both got some stickers of the Multnomah Falls for our panniers.

After seeing those falls we headed out to find lunch. We decided on some Taco Bell and ate that. After filling up we still had a long way to go. The original plan was to head back to the coast and ride 101 all the way down to Redwoods. Since the weather had been holding us back and we were pretty sore, we decided just to take I-5 down to 199 and take that into the park. We were on I-5 for over 200 miles and it was pretty boring. Once we got to 199 things started changing for the better. The weather cleared up and the roads got really twisty. We continued on that for 90 miles until it connected back with 101 and we headed into the park. Ryan had to take the twists pretty slowly since his rear tire was almost bare. We really have to take care of that tomorrow.

We made it to camp around 9:00 and fortunately still had a bit of light to set up our tents. We got to see some of the Redwoods on our way to the campsite which was really cool. The campsite attendant told us there were bears in the area and whatever had any kind of scent needed to be put in the bear box. We both ate and then quickly decided to head off to bed after another long day, about 14 hours in total.

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