Day 5: Dinner at the country club

I caved, and didn’t quite make the 100 miles today. I got side tracked by the ATV rental. That being said, still a blast of a day. Passed the 200 mile mark, ripped it up on the dunes, talked with lots of people along the way, got dinner at a super fancy golf course, and had a beautiful place to camp at a hiker biker site.

My bike in front of Christopher’s house.

200 miles!

Much of today was inland, and through some beautiful inland scenery (and some logging!)

My first stop of the day was for ATV rentals. (I caved, I know I said I wasn’t going to, but I did! And glad I did)

Probably would’ve been more fun with a larger group (or even a friend)! But, ATV’s can climb some surprisingly steep hills :) I only did an hour rental, then continued.

The Central Oregon Coast is much like the coast of Lake Michigan. Huge sand dunes, and beautiful coastline. The only difference is the waves are bigger!

Because I was trying to make quite a bit of distance, there aren’t a ton of pictures, but here’s some pictures of the Coos Bay Bridge! (Probably the scariest bridge I had to cross, so I just crossed in the center of the bridge.)

And a really cool looking house I passed.

One thing I’ve learned this trip is, if you think it might be worth to stop and luck, definitely give it a shot. I think I stop more often when biking then I would when driving! I should probably stop more often when driving :). But I’m more then happy to bike an extra 5-10 miles to see something. But not drive an extra 5-10 miles?

So, I stopped to look at Sunset Bay State Park, Shores Acre Park, and Cape Argo Park. The shoreline there is super interesting. There’s a large reef a ways off shore, and shipwrecks used to happen all the time. So a long time ago, someone bought the land, and made a business out of rescuing and returning lost cargo! Brilliant! Location, location, location. After awhile, the land got donated to the state to make it a park, and now people like me (and retirees) get to see it.

On my way out of the park I talked with a nice elderly couple about park. They come here often, and said I had to visit the gardens before I left. (Back to that thing about stopping for most everything.) On there advice, I stopped at the gardens. It wasn’t my favorite, but it was really peaceful. A nice place to sit and reflect.

After the garden, I pushed to my fancy dinner spot, the Bandon Dunes Gulf Course. Apparently, if you golf, you’ve heard of this place. It’s super nice, with lots of lodging, separate parking for caddy’s, and a nice bar called McKee’s. I had dinner in McKee’s, talked with the bartender for awhile about brewing beer (apparently a new brewery opens every 12 hours in the U.S., how often do they close?), and talked with some people at the bar. Then I was off to setup camp and catch the sunset.

All in all I did about 80 miles today, if you include all the side tours. Tomorrow (or today when I post this) I’ll do about 20 miles to Cape Blanco, and stay there a night or two. Then I’ll need to push hard south. I might be out of cell service for the next few days, I’m writing this from the Bandon brewery if you want to see where I am!