Pacific Coast Tour – Day 19 – 21; Cape Lookout to Washburne State Park – The Foggy Coast

Day: 19 – Foulweather
August 5, 2021

Distance: 67 miles (777 total)
Cape Lookout to Newport

The day started out foggy, and basically stayed foggy all day. With rain in the forecast we had gotten ourselves a warm showers host in Newport, so that was our goal for the day.

We had three major hills for the day, the first being right outside of our campgrounds at Cape Lookout. It was nice to have one done relatively early on, but it did take us an hour to go only like 5 miles, and thanks to the fog, not much of a rewarding scenic vista.

On our downhill we went through Sandlake, a sand dune area. The areas where there were evergreen trees growing out of the sand looked really neat – almost like trees in a snow drift.

We then made our way back toward the coast where even with the fog we got the occasional pretty view, with some of the low clouds creating a unique scene.

Riding through the beach towns along the coast is a lot of fun. We stopped for a second breakfast of hot chocolate and pop tarts as we left the coast again outside Pacific City. After riding on 101 for a while, we had a detour onto “Old Scenic 101” for our second climb of the day. It was nice to get away from the steel river of traffic, and I’m guessing it had shallower climbs which was nice, although it did add a few miles to the route.

We continued our way South, and again had a detour off of 101 around Devil’s Lake to avoid the bulk of Lincoln City traffic. That road was annoyingly full of rolling hills- which the tandem is terrible at holding momentum on so we found it to be very annoying even if it did get us away from the loud highway.

The mist/fog started to pick up and we both got a little worried we would have to stop for the day early, but our persistence paid off. As we reached Boiler Bay, our first real scenic viewpoint of the day, the sun seemed to come out. We had excellent views for the next little while, and even found a “bob” of seals lounging about on the rocks. We had a couple more scenic vistas but the weather did not hold out for us and the fog came back as we climbed our third major hill for the day. Cape Foulweather is supposed to be an excellent scenic vista, but all we got to see was white. Well at least we had a downhill to look forward to.

Just as we were rolling into Newport around 5:30 the fog was turning into a misty rain, and our wonderful tailwind had rotated into a headwind. Before meeting up with our host we swung into Walmart (apparently there are more along the coast than Google originally showed us) and snagged one of the quart size bottle of white gas they had left – huzzah!

We then met up with our warm showers host, Nick, who graciously gave up his bed for us and slept on the couch. We were able to shower and eat a real meal of pasta and salads plus a beer and exchange stories before calling it a day.

Day: 20 – Rest Day
August 6, 2021

Distance: 0 miles (777 total)
Rest Day in Newport

We, and by “we” I mostly mean our butts, were very much in need of a rest day and Nick, our warm showers host, graciously agreed to let us stay an extra night in Newport. So today was a no riding day.

We started off with a fabulous home cooked breakfast from our host. We then had an adventure to the laundry mat, including a hunt for quarters due to their broken change machine. Luckily we were successful, and very happy to have a set of actually clean clothes (and not just camp clean).

After lounging a bit we treated Nick to lunch at the Thai Elephant. Afterwards he gave us a driving tour of the town (still super foggy out today so no views, but the touristy downtown and harbor areas were cute). Then we enjoyed some more lounging before we mustered up the strength to hit the grocery store to restock our bags.

As the name implies, the day was pretty restful. We wandered down to the foggy beach in the afternoon, seriously it was so foggy you couldn’t see the water until it was lapping at your toes. We sat on Nick’s couch. And Andrew was even a little productive; swapping our front and back tires to balance out the wear. Although he did accidentally pinch flat one of the tubes while doing so, so he had to patch it- but better here than on the side of the road somewhere.

Day: 21
August 7, 2021

Distance: 38 miles (815 total)
Newport to Carl G. Washburne Memorial State Park

We were so excited when we woke up to sunshine this morning. We were able to see some of the Newport coastline we had missed previously.

Sadly the sunshine didn’t hold out for us. As we rolled into Seal Rock State Park the clouds were already starting to hide the rocks. Although they still looked really cool, even if it was probably too cold for any seals to hang out.

Waldport was about our halfway point for the day, and coincidentally about halfway down Oregon as well! We stopped into the visitor center and were given way to many pamphlets, but some did actually come in handy.

After a quick break for lunch at Beach Side State Park we made our way to Yachats where we stopped for the ever important ice cream! (The sun had peeked it’s way out by that time, so it was a little warm).

Our main stop for the day was Cape Perpetua. Since we had a low mileage day we were able to spend some time exploring the cool coast line and rock features such as the Devil’s Churn and Thor’s Well. Sadly just as we were ready to move on the rain/ mist picked up and we still had another 9 miles to go!

Our (well mostly Andrew’s) cheery moods had dampened along with ourselves for the last stretch until I spotted a whale in the distance! I shouted with glee, and we rushed up the hill we were currently climbing to get to a pull off so that Andrew could see it as well. After getting our fill of whale watching, we continued on our way, and actually spotted a second even closer whale! What a day. Mostly we just saw the water spouts and the large backs, but the second whale gave us a little fin wave. (I’m assuming they were grey whales, but I don’t actually know).

Our campsite tonight is at Washburne State Park. The hiker biker sites are in a fun shared wooded area that does an excellent job of catching the rain/mist (although it did stop precipitating shortly after we set up our tent.) Hoping for continuously better weather tomorrow- we don’t have cell service so can’t even mentally prepare ourselves for what storms may be coming, so hopefully they aren’t.

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