Day 18: last night in Oregon
Camp fire with a beer last night was cool. 2 separate Americans joined me, the German couple and the Spanish guy around the campfire. One interesting story and maybe warning was from one of the new Americans called Jamie. He described waking up in his tent one night to the sounds of many creatures manic laughing just outside his tent. He turned on his headlight and peered outside. About 20 racoons stood around his bike frozen looking back at him. A couple of seconds pass, and then the raccoons turn their attention back to the bike and start tearing into the pannier bags, all the while laughing histerically. Not sure what the lesson here is, but I am sure there is one.
The remoteness of camp and the clear skies meant that once the fire died down we could just about see the outline of the milky way. Pretty cool. I am sure this view gets much better in South America.
I wasn’t looking forward to today. I knew it would be the biggest mileage of the trip so far, with maybe the biggest climbs of the trip so far. And I haven’t had a rest day in over a week… So I set my alarm to be up and out early so I could take it nice and slow. But I need not have worried. While there was a lot of climbing and kms, spirits were high and they flew by. Helped of course by great views. Some of the last views I will get in Oregon in fact as tomorrow I will pass into California. This is a little bitter sweet as Oregon was great, especially the state parks and the hiker biker sites.
I thought I was a genius at lunch time for coming up with the idea of putting both Peanut butter and Nutella on the tortilla together. But I was later told that this is a common thing. There goes that million dollar idea…
I met a guy called Orly in a camper yesterday at the entry to the campsite and we chatted for a couple of mins. Today I met him again at a random view point half way through my cycle and we had a good chat (and selfie). He is heading south at roughly the same pace as me in his campervan with his 2 dogs.
I did try taking some go pro footage today but when I tried to copy it to the phone later in the evening, it wasn’t there. Guess some power problems. Will try again tomorrow.
Camp tonight is at Harris beach state park making today an 80km day with 1670 meters of elevation gain. A big day by my standards. The same crowd (a German couple, a Spanish guy, an American guy called Tomie) is at the campground tonight. This time beers were on Jacob.
Tomorrow I will cross the state border into California (and take the compulsory photo at the sign). Tomorrow I will stay at my first warm showers host so I am looking forward to that. I believe that it is in some kind of church. But tomorrow is only a 40ish km day and I don’t meet the host until 4pm so get to have a good lie-in and hang around camp in the morning before setting out.
