Away We Go

And the trip is underway.  We departed the lodge this morning bright and early under light rain.

After slaloming through the beaverton suburbs we ened up on the "Vineyard and Vine Scenic Route".  It was a great road, scenic, very few cars, and flat.

We eventually linked up with highway 6 to Tillamook, which took us through the Tillamook State Forest.  It was a pretty long climb, up to a summit of 1600'.

I had been recording the ride on Strava, but when we stopped to rest I noticed my battery was so low it had turned off the GPS.  I broke out the solar charger since the rain had stopped but realized I had nothing to tie it down with, I had to improvise with a strip of cliff bar wrapper.

We made the summit in about 3 hours.  The way down was awesome; for some reason it seemed like the descent was longer than the climb, perhaps the grade was not as severe.  On the way down we ran into a dog wandering around the highway.  She was playing frogger with the logging trucks which was pretty scary.  We stopped and got her off the road but she had no tag.  Todd started looking for a number to call while I took her to the closest house thinking it might be theirs.  Sadly the older couple that answered didn't think she was from the area, but they were very friendly and called animal control for her.

She was super scared but really friendly, maybe she was camping and ran off.  Anyways once someone was on the way for her we continued on to Tilamook.  We had been pushing pretty hard since we left and were starving by the time we were getting close.  When I mentioned to Todd that a grilled cheese and tomato soup would hit the spot, he responded he had been thinking the same thing for the last 10 miles.  So once we finally got there:

The Cheese Factory was pretty funny.  The normal touristy stuff:

As well as a viewing area of the factory itself:

After a tour and some Tilamook ice cream, we resumed with 20 miles left to our destination for the night, Cape Lookout State Park.  Right as we geared back up it starting raining, hard.  We thought about taking a short cut, but decided to tough out the Three Capes Scenic Router.  Now that we're here I'm glad we did it, but on the way it was absolutely miserable.  The wind was so strong the rain was coming in sideways, and made progress super slow.  Then we hit a climb to cape Meares we definitely weren't excited about, but eventually the Pacific:

We stopped in Netarts to pick up supplies for dinner.  We were soaked to the bone and must have looked pretty sad because the lady behind the counter had a big chuckle when we walked in.  We ended up with chile and rice, and oatmeal for breakfast.  Cape Lookout wasn't that far down the road, and we actually got passed by my Mom a few miles from camp.  They opted for a hotel due to the rainy conditions, but we set up camp and got to work on dinner.

Fortunately the rain seems to have subsided, and now we're trying to get a fire started with our neighbor, Gabriel, who is interesting to say the least.  Apparently the climb first thing tomorrow is the worst on the Oregon section of the route, so time to get some rest.  Day One was pretty rough, but definitely exciting.  Really looking forward to the rest of the trip, but also hoping for better conditions.