Not sure exactly what happened. Our relaxing, keep the riding hours shorter, stop, see the sights, take lots of pictures, smell the roses, seemed to have turned into a bit of a marathon. Today was another long hard day.
Leaving Ontario, Oregon, our sights were set on somewhere in the Portland area. Although we were still on interstate 84 the ride was far superior to yesterday’s experience. There was some breeze, but nothing really out of the ordinary. The terrain was more mountainous (big hills). The wonderful thing about today’s ride was the seemingly unending supply of beautiful high speed sweepers along the Oregon Trail which followed the magnificent Columbia River Valley.
Rolling along at 140+ kph and not having to worry about being chased by pretty lights does have something to be said for it. Getting into Portland we elected to go through to the other side of the city before stopping. As luck would have it, we are now into the start of rush hour traffic and of course, there was the mandatory construction. All of this conspired against us and we took an unscheduled exit from Oregon and into Washington.
After stopping at a beautiful rest stop, we continued to along the Columbia Valley crossing back to Oregon at Longview. Now on the Columbia river highway was stopped at Clatskanie and after a brief conference continued to Astoria. Unbeknownst to us, Astoria is the tourist Mecca of this part of the US. Everything that even remotely resembled a room with a bed was already booked. Here we are, darkness descending upon us, very hungry, very tired, and there are no rooms at the inns. Standing in a parking lot beside a busy road we ran down the power of my phone as we made call after call and hand to plug the phone into the portable power supply. Fortunately, Larry hit upon an idea that we had not really considered and 13 hours after we left the last hotel we were able to secure a very nice place for the the next couple of nights. Too tired to go out for a meal, we walked over to the adjacent Safeway and stocked up on a variety of food that we took back and ate in the room. Best Chinese food I’ve ever eaten in Astoria.
4…..3…..2……1…….I’m outta here. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
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