We woke up late again. And spent a good deal of time getting the bikes loaded and ready to go. We said our goodbyes and thankyou's to Mike at around eleven. Although we were now east of Astoria, we rode once again back into town. Route 30, following the Columbia River would be flatter, but would have more traffic. We had met some cyclists the day before who told us the traffic was terrible on 30 during their ride down from Portland. In addition, Mike had a friend who would let us stop in at his home off of 202, about 40 miles away. 202 was more direct anyways, and after 3 nights in and around Astoria I was really anxious to put some miles between us and the Pacific.

The country side is beautiful here. Just outside of Astoria the population drops drastically. A few miles out we found some small falls by the road that we took a picture of. Past "the only store in Olney" there was an Elk preserve. We stopped, but even with my binoculars we could only barely make them out. We did however notice a gigantic banana slug, and decided to be satisfied with that.

We spent some time trying to identify the trees with my very heavy American Wildlife book.The coastal forests had doubtlessly been more impressive in the past, we saw many absolutely huge stumps along the road. Even so, with natural regrowth and the occasional tree farm it was still invigorating.

As were the hills. Patti would choose a different word. She worked really hard. Remember that she had done no training, had almost no bicycle experience, and was suddenly carrying about 50 pounds up fifteen hundred foot inclines. She did awesome. Even so, our pace forced us to stop a little past the very small town of Jewel. Near the end of the day, we tried a shortcut via a logging road to Mike's friend's house. The road was unpaved after the first mile and way too steep. So we settled for an open field to camp in. I used my water filter to get water from a nearbye stream and Patti made us a well deserved dinner of Lipton noodles and Stove Top stuffing. We had just enough fuel to cook dinner. The sky was exceptionally clear.