Day 2: Cape Lookout State Park, OR to Rose Lodge, OR

Miles: 40

Elevation (ft): 2500

Total trip mileage: 56

Cape Lookout State Park - Pacific Ocean

Throughout the night, we heard various noises and suspected we had a furry visitor - or Chelsea thought it may be the alien from the movie Signs. After barely sleeping a wink, Chad got up to enjoy the sunrise over the beach and found that his sneaker bag had been dragged ten yards from camp and had a hole in it. Luckily, the sneakers were not harmed, nor was the animal, as far as we know - more on that later. We met some of the other campers. One set was a father and daughter duo cycling to San Francisco. The other was an Oregonian touring with his trombone. He was also visited by our furry friend who nabbed his cannibus oil infused chocolates. We think this explains why he was canvassing for food.

After packing up our site and taking our official Pacific Coast photo, we began the climb out of Cape Lookout. This climb is the worst. It is 700+ feet of climbing up steep grades in only three miles. The only good things about climbing are the views from the top and the eventual descents. That’s enough about the climb - we don’t want to remember our struggle up it.

The next couple of hours, we biked through a number of cute coastal towns - Tierra del Mar, Woods, and Pacific City. At the top of one of the climbs, we ran into a few other groups of cyclists (and saw two Bald Eagles flying!). One set were two guys heading to San Francisco - one who has done the TransAm seven times. Another set was a father daughter pair cycling from Canada to Mexico to raise money for cancer. The final pair was our neighbors from this morning. The cycling community is overwhelmingly friendly and we have already had many great conversations with those we meet. We took a photo of the group before we all shared our well-wishes and departed.

We stopped for lunch and then tackled our final climb of the day. It was also brutal. Tired and hungry, we arrived at the Salmon River Evergreen RV Park, found a spot for $10, and set up camp. A gentleman from Serbia rolled in shortly after us and shared his four-month adventure from Florida over a beer and chips. All settled in, we called it a night.