Day 2 (June 3rd, 2024)

City To City: Astoria - HammondMiles: 68Miles Total: 80Flats: 0Video: https://youtu.be/RMlp0CDEmco?si=e2RazTs5xAn6Q7pB

Climbing up the side of a curvy hill

At a designated overlook

Us stopped for lunch outside a grocery store

 B y: L a y l a 

     On the morning of June 3rd, we had everything packed up and ready to go by 7:30 in the morning. We had mostly dry clothes thanks to the public restroom's hand dryers. At one point, we had three hand dryers going because we desperately didn't want to waste dry, clean clothes when we knew it would be raining again, and we also didn't want to put the same sopping wet clothes from the day before. We left the city of Astoria and began biking our way to Bay City. Confusion of reading the map and navigating correctly ended up happening a few times just within thirty minutes of each other. By the third time we got confused, we stopped off the road's edge in a driveway. While trying to figure out the map, a cute lab retriever approached the fence, barking. A man then opened the front door and stepped out. He looked like he was a retired sea captain who had stepped out of the 1800s. With a steaming, white mug, his dark hair with a little gray at his temples pulled back into a sailor's ponytail, and a long, dark overcoat to ward off the wind, he apologized on behalf of his barking dog. The man then stepped back into his small house with his dog and closed his white cottage door. After clarifying our route, we started off again. We traveled through wet Douglas Fir trees down to the ocean in the city of Seaside. As we rode slowly along the oceanfront walkway, we watched the breathtaking jade waves crash back into the ocean and gently lap up on the shoreline. We stopped at a coffee shop to catch up on blogging and video making. We stayed there an hour later than we wanted but eventually moved on. We stopped for lunch and grocery shopping around 3:30 pm, then continued until we reached a designated campground for the night. When we arrived, it wasn't raining, so we immediately set up the tent (because it's miserable setting up a tent in the rain). Since one of the campground rules was "First come, first serve," we had to call and make the payment, and then the city would let us have the code for the restrooms. Well, the code never came, and we called, but no one picked up the phone. Since it had been raining intermittently, we were wet and cold and just wanted to eat dinner, change into warm clothes, and bury ourselves in our sleeping bags. Lucky for us, there were public restrooms just a little further away. The second we ate dinner, set everything up, and ensured everything was put away, we buried ourselves into our sleeping bags.