Day 2: The Ride Through Portland

Day 2 was our first day with all our gear. We are learning as we go about how to pack our stuff into those panniers, and it was comical trying to pull everything together for May 24th.

Dawn made us a fabulous breakfast and sentus off from Newberg on the local's backroads--which we appreciated very much when we got to Rt 99, which was our route into the center of Portland. LOTS of traffic! Speeding cars and trucks! Scary--even though Portland is a very bike-friendly city and has many bike lanes on most of the roads (even some interstates). And although we started and ended our day at sea level, we climbed the entire time!

Maybe the most disconcerting was the trip across the Willamette River on the Ross Island Bridge in the center of Portland--we were traveling on a 3-foot sidewalk looking at oncoming traffic. It was pretty scary meeting a tractor trailer coming at you at 70 mph with only a few inches of sidewalk as your buffer!

We got lots of practice at starting and stopping with our heavy loads. There are a LOT of traffic lights in Portland, and we seemed to stop at every one! We decided we spent at least an hour of our day stopped or starting back up.

We crossed into Washington State over the I-205 bridge, which has a 9-foot pedestrian and bicycle lane right in the middle. So there we were--with 4 lanes of traffic on each side whizzing by. And of course it was uphill the whole way into Washington!

The good news was that we were within sight of Mt. Hood and crossing the fabulous Columbia River. It was deafening from the traffic, but very beautiful nonetheless.

We entered Washington and left traffic behind for awhile. We decided to go as far as our rears would allow. We had spent a lot of saddle time with all the traffic and lights, but not a lot of miles. It turns out the stopping point was Camas, WA. We arrived into town after about 45 miles of riding and I stopped. I told David that either I was just going directly to the Funeral Home across the street or we could check into a hotel! He picked the hotel and we had a lovely evening in Camas, and a wonderful dinner at the Prune Hill Restaurant with our first taste of Walla Walla Wine (say that three times fast).

Back to the hotel room with our hamburger butts and a couple of massages--then another night where we fell asleep in 3 seconds or less! Maybe we'll get used to this soon...