Day 21 (Port Orford - Brookings 95km)

Today was another really nice riding day. Since Dan and Caedmon were MIA I juust rode at a comfortably fast pace and met up with a guy called Danny on the road who grew up in LA butu is now living in an Israeli settlement which I think is in the west bank. I don't know what he does there. Soon after meeting him we reached the climb to Cape Sebastian, and at 800 feet I dropped Danny like a hot potato, staying in the big chainring the entire climb averaging something like 15km/h the whole way up. At the summit I had a lunch of guacamole and hummus, and then raced down the hill at crazy speeds. I soundly beat my speed record with a new top speed of 72km/h. I maxed ouut on my biggest gear and had to lay on the brakes a little since there were strong side gusts that were pushing my wheels around.

At the bottom of the hill I jammed on the brakes because there were Dan and Caedmon who were at the side of the road! We said hi and I rode on with a really nice tailwind at my back, helping me sail along for the rest of the day to the Harris Beach state park. Along the way to the state park I stopped at half a dozen amazing viewpoints of rock arches and natural bridges, and also crossed the highest manmade bridge in Oregon, something close to 400 feet high. I hiked down to one of the naturual bridges on what I think used to be a path (it was so overgrown I had to crawl on sections), but once I got close to it I saw I would have to do some rock climbing with possible 200 foot falls and it was really windy, so I chickened out and headed back up.

I rode past the state park into town to do some shopping at Fred Meyers which was a really really gigantic superstore for being in such a small town as Brookings. After browsing for ages I told the cashier that the place was giant and she looked at me like I was crazy and said it wasn't big at all! The state park was really nice and decked out with all the amenities (if I had brought my RV I could have had a cable TV hookup!). At the campsite there were a total of seven touring cyclists, myself included.