Day 19, 9/2/08

Woke up to sunny skies. Great conditions for riding. We put in 58 miles, stopping to camp at Sunset Bay State Park, west of Charleston. State parks really are the way to go here in Oregon. The scenery today was fairly ordinary and uneventful. We stopped at a place in Reedsport and bought a small bottle of locally grown honey. The lady only charged us $1 for the honey. We had our first flat tire of our trip today on Sam's rear wheel. Stopped for lunch in Hauser. We agreed that the honey is a nice addition to our peanut butter banana sandwiches.

Probably the highlight of the ride was crossing this narrow bridge coming into North Bend. It was 1 mile long and you have to walk your bike across it on a walkway that has a guardrail on the water side but none on the side next to the traffic. We also got hit with big gusts of wind as we were crossing. It was pretty scary. As we were crossing, a guy was riding on the path coming the opposite direction. We all managed to fit. But he didn't even stop to walk around. Crazy.

At the other end of the bridge we ran into Ron. He was ready to ride his bike across and was waiting for us to finish crossing. To say his bike was all loaded up would be an understatement. His bike was loaded with gear plus he was pulling a fully loaded trailer. He easily had over 200 lbs of gear. It was difficult to even hold upright. He said he planned on riding 600 miles on his trip. It was his first day out and his rig had already tipped over twice. Included in his gear was fishing tackle and a metal detector. I asked him how he handles climbing. He said he gets off and walks his bike up hills. The whole thing didn't make much sense to us but we had to admire his positive attitude and enthusiasm. Good luck, Ron.

For dinner we cooked up our remaining pasta noodles and combined with a jar of white pasta sauce, can of sliced olives, 4 oz of chopped chicken lunch meat and those chanterelle mushrooms. Finished the rest of the pumpkin bread.