Lincoln City - Raymond

When crossing over to Washington State on Wednesday in Astoria I had to cross the bridge over the Columbia river, that was one of the worst cyclebridges I had and surely deserves a place in my personal top 20. I saw Mount St. Helens in the east some 150 miles away from me ! I met NA7Q on the bridge in Astoria, Mike, very nice young ham.

Here I saw the first real big containervessels since San Francisco.
Today I topped the 1000-milemarker, that some 1600 kilometers .. everything a ok !

I met a real Alaskan guy on a bicycle onroute who was wearing a helmet with a HD-camera on. He explained that it was easier to make photos as he was driving..
I also met Ben from Winnipeg along with another three friends of him, he invited me over to come at his place when I`ll cycle up to Winnipeg, very nice from him.
Monday I passed trough the nice city of Pacific City. A little bit like Knokke but smaller. Canon Beach was more like Knokke.
In Canon Beach I saw the antenna of Doug N7HH and he invited me to see his radioroom. He`s a very bussy man as he runs a hotel/motel and is active in some groups as there is the local emergency hamradio group.
The next day there was an exercise for a Tsunami alert as placed on billboards along the road. In the morning there was a small Cesna plane that flew over announcing that it was also stating that it was a Tsunami test. I stayed in the local Cape Lookout State Park, one of the nicer parks but sparsely populated at this time of year.

I stayed also south of Canon Beach, there was a state park but they closed the camping area because the trees were falling on the RV`s so ... I asked a man if he knew a good place to stay for the night and he showed me the garden of a nextdoor house that he kept an eye on while they went away, it was a beautiful evening and great beaches and photo`s.

A girl in a coffeshop in Tillamook thought the capital of Belgium was Brugge, explained her that it was definitively something else ;-]
In Raymond I asked on the local repeatersystem for a good place to set up the tent since there were no good places around like a state park and Thatcher KE7JMC invited me to set up my tent in his garden for the night, perfect !
On the HF it wasn`t much of a nice period lately.. flux went down to 80 from 110 ..
On the radio I kept contact on the local net on 7177 in the evening qround 21-22 local  and 7145 around 0800 local in the morning.
Hopefully I get into Vancouver by next weekend !

Coos Bay - Lincoln City

Almost out of Oregon by now. It surely went by rather quickly.

North of Coos Bay are some nice beaches and inlets with cols that go up to some 500 feet. Saturday was very sunny and sunday rather strange. First sun al over and later on the day rain like it was never going to stop.

Florence and Newport are dull mediocre countytowns with the same shops all-over again. The nicer places can be found in-between. Slept into the dune-area near Yachats and placed an GP-antenna for 20 almost on the beach. Great ears but no ON-catch this time, DL and YL were ok.

Met a lady walking on the beach that was born in Fynn and raised in Ahus DK. She's some kind of a 'strandjutter' and gave me a little pink stone that's very shiny and stuff. She lived here for more than 55 years and by age she's .. some 5 years older than the oldest bakery-woman in Willebroek..

Again met some really interesting cyclers al going South to San Francisco or San Diego. Alex, Ken, Kirsten and friend and a young guy from Portland that was wearing the national crossjersey from .be from Sven Nys, he said.. I forgot his name, quite a strange one but he was really into veldcross and knew much about it.

I'm always happy when the weekend is over, way too much traffic on the roads and too many people into shops and restos. I got a flat tire on sunday, it really was leaking air very slowly. There was a little piece of metal in the outertire that perforated the innertire. Fixed it on a statecampground where I stood next to a girl from London, UK doing the opposite trip as i'm doing upto Vancouver. This campsite had T-Mobile datacoverage, a real miracle..

Prognoses for sunny days in the next 3 days are non-existant.