Port Orford, OR

Finally, we are doing an easy day! After traveling 150 miles in the last two days, we decided to ease off a little bit and only ride for 40 miles today. We spent a night at KOA camp in Langlois and stopped for a leisurely lunch in Port Orford this afternoon. We'll camp 30 miles south of here if we can find a vacancy this Memorial Day weekend. And if not, we will have to trust Tomas's "stealth" camping skills again.

Last time we "stealth" camped like that was two days ago, at Umpqua Lighthouse State Park. We hid our tents in the bushes and put up with just cold water and no showers for the night. We didn't get caught or fined and we packed our tents promptly at 6.00 am and got on our bikes. We felt pretty good about ourselves being so smart and crafty. But about 50 meters down the road we saw a perfectly legal, fully equipped campground with hot water, showers, and possibly laundromats too. I can only imagine the reaction of a ranger who could have caught us that night...

We spent the first week going along 101 mostly and crossed the entire length of Oregon Dunes conglomeration of state parks. The area feels like a never ending city of RVs, with ATV and cross bike rentals and other entertainment for the campers. Although the weather was on the colder side and it was windy and cloudy, the scenery was very enjoyable. There were some cute towns along the road, such as Bandon, with its cozy old town, lighthouses and, of course, Best Coffee Shop and Restaurant, where we spent quite a bit of time thawing. As a sidenote, most of the towns along the way seem to have something that is either world's biggest, smallest, shortest or tallest. You have to find a way to distinguish yourself somehow, I guess. But bragging about "world's shortest river" is a rather interesting way of doing it.

OK, time to get rolling again. California, here we come (in a day or so)!