June 15th Ride Report. Oregon Pacific Coast Hwy.

Today’s run was all about the Pacific Coast Highway and it rarely disappointed and mostly was a highlight reel. I would estimate that 80% of the Highway run along the coastline. Some of the scenery was spectacular and unfortunately my little camera has just about bitten the dust. I believe the internal lens has been corrupted or is just falling apart. Either way, some of the pictures turned out very nice. Some just have a few spots.I will be on the hunt for a camera that will work for me on a motorcycle. Has to be glove friendly.

This morning in Astoria the skies were mostly clear and the temperatures felt warmer than the 60-62 that the bike was reporting. This also allowed me to take some very nice pictures with those clear skies. What did amaze me about the first half of the ride is how busy the road actually was. Nobody wanted to pass anybody either, so cars just kept stacking up deeper and deeper. One particular driver from Florida, yes he was an old fart, thought doing 20 under the speed limit was a good thing. On top of that, he thought it was cool just to let people stack up behind him. You may see this as his right, but I see it two different ways. First, this old fart is just on a power trip. Look at me stack the traffic. Second and the most important is that it is reckless driving in most states to do 20 over or under the posted speed limit. Yes, under! Damn good reason for it to. You might get run over by an 18-wheeler and flatten like a pancake if you cannot maintain the posted speed. That’s another reason you will see a lot of motorcyclist when stopped in traffic, sort of offset to the left or right behind a vehicle in case traffic behind them doesn’t stop they can bolt down the side of stopped traffic. Long story short, I pulled right up beside his driver side window at 35 mph in a 55 mph zone, stared into window, and waved him to the side of the road. To no avail, so I speed off and left the old fart waddling down the road.

It must have been the traffic on the road today because I felt exhausted when I pulled in Crescent City today around 5:00 to 5:30. Can’t remember the exact time. So I checked into the hotel, sat resting for a good hour before I could get out of my chair and go find dinner. Another unfortunate situation is the internet in the hotel is down and appears they are doing nothing to fix it.

Tomorrow I will be running a little further south on 101 checking out the Redwood National Forest, Chandler Drive Through Tree, Humboldt national Park, and of course more coastline. This will be as far south as I go in California and will actually end my day back in Crescent City. The day after I will actually do my first official turn back home in the wiggle to get into Virginia. Sad but true, my trip is winding down but I still have a bunch of miles to do and bunch of stuff to see.

Beware, over 100 photo’s in that link below.

Picture of the Day