Oregon coast third day

Sand, lots and lots of sand!
I passed the famous sand dunes of Oregon today, went for a walk in them, saw a slug with leopard prints (never seen a slug like this before, bright yellow with black spots) and marvelled at the beach in Coos Bay. The town is not pretty at all, but the beach is the beginning point of the prettiest part of Oregon coast, rocks in the ocean with one crooked tree on it, wild coast with white sand, absolutely stunning. Pictures will appear on this blog!

Oregon coast second day

it's sunny! Riding along the coast in the sunshine gives me a summer feeling. The coast gets prettier and prettier from here on, todays big plan is going to Newport and try a lot of beer from Rouge Brewery. They have about 20 different kinds of beer, everything from Weizen to Stout. I'm a red beer or stout girl and my favorite is Mocha Porter, dark not bitter, slightly chocolaty. There is also a decent red one (I think it had rouge in the name) a nice summer beer called "yellow snow" (points for the name) and a chocolate beer, which is well, chocolate, so you can't go wrong there...
For those concerned that I was riding my bike blind drunk, I tasted the beer together with a group of Americans on holiday, so I only had sips and safely as well as legally rode my bike 20 more miles to a campground in a state park on the beach.

Oregon coast first day

My first day on the coast started with rain, and it kept on raining the whole day, so I did not get very far, nor did I a lot of walking around. I had made it to Seaside the day before, but camped out of town. In the morning I went into town, it reminded me of the coastal towns in Belgium, lots of tourist shops, hotels, summer houses, arcades and little cafes. I drove on to Cannon Beach, but it was very much the same as Seaside, I did find a fun kite shop, though, which was nice to look around. The restaurant with the best clam chowder ever (according to Kristie and Randy) was unfortunately closed, so I drove on. I did find the smaller towns, less developed (read touristy) towns, such as Rockaway Beach, prettier and I had a clam chowder in one of them. I noticed there is a train going on this part of the coast, I don't know how far, but train tracks kept accompanying the 101 for a while. In Tillamook, I did visit the cheese factory, it is impossible to miss, as it is directly on the 101. It was Sunday, so most of the cheese production was at a standstill, but I did get to try lots of cheese. I still like medium cheddar the most, though, guess my cheese taste is one of the few conservative things about me. It was still raining, so I gave up and pitched my tent in Tillamook and had a very wet dinner.

Seattle vs Portland

this is a very unfair comparison, because Seattle was a mess. One of my Creditcards did not work (wrong pin) which ment I had to find alternative ways of financing (another bank account that is) and couchsurfing did not work out on short notice, but fortunatly I was rescued by a couchsurfer (Thank you Nicholas!) who I was only supposed to meet to talk about Iceland. So I did not see a lot of Seattle, except for the scooter shop, the public library (which is a really cool building!) and some of the centre. I di go into a Starbucks and made a picture of myself, as a friend has requested me to do that. There is a Starbucks on every corner in Seattle, people there must live of Coffee (and have lots of money to buy it). I do not like Starbucks Coffee very much, maybe I'm spoiled by "Te og Kaffi", but I also did have better coffee in the little drive through expresso shops on the road.
Portland was awesome! Couchsurfing did not work out again, so I had to stay in a Motel as the Hostels were full as well. But the Motel had a bar attached to it, where I went to have a bruger after a long and somewhat scary ride into the city. I somehow ended up going over one of the biggest bridges into Portland, surrounded by Trucks, in afternoon traffic. So I needed a bruger and a beer. Oregon is famous for it's microbreweries, and the bar had a few of them on tap, so I asked the couple sitting next to me, which beer they recommend. Which was lucky, as the couple were Kristie and Randy, who I had a long converstion with, about travelling and beer and where to go on the Oregon coast. Kristie had a free day the next day, so she was nice enough to go and take me to see the Multnomah Falls, one of Oregons most famous tourist attractions. We climed all the way to the top adn had a beer afterwards in Edgefield, an old Workers-Farm, which now belongs to the McMenamins breweries and Restaurants. I was impressed enough by the beer to buy a shirt :) In town we met up with Randy and had dinner in a pretty little Restaurant, which was serving Thai, Mexican, Ethopian and Carribean food, somehow this worked together and the atmosphere was pure summer holiday like. I went to bed early as I needed to get up early to go to the coast, but I definatly enjoyed Portland a lot.

Whittier

I loved this town! This was where the ferry left, but I came a day earlier to hike over a mountain pass to a glacier lagoon (the only hike around town, but beautiful). There I witnessed the glacier crashing into the water. But here is why Whittier is cool: it used to be an army base in the cold war. It was chosen for this as the harbour is year round ice free and because the constant cloud coverage protects from air surveillance. In other words, the town is always foggy. And fog plus mountains, plus glaciers coming down from the mountains makes a very spooky atmosphere. The whole army base used to live in two huge houses, one even has a hospital and theater inside, next to the flats. this one is in ruins now, and it is possible to simply walk around there, if one dears, because it is the perfect horror movie set. The other one is simlilar, but smaler and now 80% of the population lives in this one huge block og flats, where you can also find the post office, town offices and a corner store. And the block of flats is not pretty, the ground floor where the shops and offices are feels more like a parking lot. I thought it was awesome :) There is also a good museum and a lot of kajaking places there, so I had enough to do while waiting for the ferry to leave.

Bears!

Worst song to sing while hiking in the wilderness of Alaska: "the teddy bears picknic". And that song was stuck in my head, when I was hiking in the backcountry of Denali National Park. Especially when hiking alone in an area with limited sight, one is supposed to make a lot of noise, not to surprise the bears and other animals, as they usually do not attack unless they feel threatened. Before one is allowed to go hiking off trail, one has to sit through a safety talk, a lot of which involves bears (there is also some information about weather, river crossing and orientation, but this was not new to me). They make it sound as if a bear will come across you every 2 min, so when I finally did go hiking, I was scared shitless. Really, I jumped when a bird was ratteling in the bushes, thinking a bear will jump out at me. Hence I was singing loudly to keep them away (no comment on this please...) I did see a pawprint, that was definatly bear and going my direction (so I went another way), but the animals that were the most agressive were the moskitos. Once I woke up to the sight of hundreds of them sitting between the outer and inner tent, waiting for their breakfast to emerge. Hiking in alaska is worth is though, glaciers, woods, mountains and lots of wildlife. When resting on a mountain top, enjoying the view over a glacier and valley with a glacier river (and thinking this look eerily familiar) a Caribou suddenly came galloping up the hill, stopped looked at us, through up his head, gallopped around in a circle and left. I think he wanted us to take his picture, but we were so surprised that he has to try the next tourists for his 15 min of fame.