July 3, 2010
55 miles today and feeling pretty good. We stopped in the morning about a mile south of Newport and ate in the Newport Marina. It’s amazing how much a good breakfast helps you out throughout the day. We went about 24 miles before we stopped in Yachats to grab a snack. Once we left Yachats I noticed that my rear gear set wasn’t changing right, so I stopped to check it out and saw that my I couldn’t change into my highest gear in the back and that the other gears weren’t catching properly. We were about 18 miles from reaching Florence (where I had seen there was a bike shop), so we decided to ride on. We went on a side trip to the Darlington Botanical Garden where they have some cool carnivorous plants whose name I can’t remember right now. There’s some pictures of them below. Apparently they bloom during May and June, so we just missed it.
It was nice and sunny today finally, so that was a huge plus as well. The weather is at about 65 degrees, but the sun keeps you warm while you’re riding; it’s a pretty perfect riding temperature. We’re now at the Jessie M. Honeyman Memorial State Park, I’ll probably run over and take some pictures of the huge sand dunes on the beach here and post them as well.
-Chris
Update: Went to the sand dunes. Really tiring hiking on the large sand dunes. I was taking pictures on the way up one of the big sand dunes and my camera ran out of batteries. After some mighty shaking, I was able to take a few more quick pics from the top of one of the sand dunes.
