Cycling 1,200 km Through Washington and Oregon | 14

Cycling 1,200 km Through Washington and Oregon | 14

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The Pacific Coast Bicycle Route  runs from Vancouver all the way   down to the border with Mexico.  With its incredible coastal views,   abundant wildlife, impressive redwoods,  and easy resupply in the frequent towns,   it's no surprise that this is one of the most  popular long-distance bike routes in the U.S. After having cycled through the remote north of  Alaska and Canada for the past three and a half   months, it felt like the perfect time for a change  of pace. So I began pedaling towards the coast.

Hi, I'm Benjamin, and I'm  cycling across the Americas.   This is what I found in the Pacific Northwest. I can't believe I'm almost back in  the U.S. This is crazy. I literally,   like, don't even know what to feel  right now. 110 days, top of Alaska,   coming up to Washington State. This is  an incredible milestone. This is amazing.

Speed limit 25—that's in miles per hour,   not kilometers now. Entering Blaine,  Washington. We are in the U.S. Shortly after crossing the border,  I set up camp at Birch Bay,   the first of many state park  campgrounds along the West Coast. All right, this is it—the first full day  in Washington State. From here, Washington,  

Oregon, and California have a lot of campsites  in state parks that have special hiker-biker   rates that are not so bad. You get pretty  decent amenities, and it's so easy—maybe   40 miles between each one. You can easily just  hop around park to park. So that’s probably what   we’re going to be doing for the next month  or so as we make our way down the coast.

So we were kind of riding through suburbia  for a while, and it was kind of brutal. Like,   not fun, to be honest. But we found the  coast—we're back. The views are pretty nice. So we have some good news  and we have some bad news. The good news is it’s a beautiful day  again today. Look at this. This is perfect.

The bad news is, I had my first case of theft  on the trip, where my towel was stolen from   the campsite restroom after I took a shower. I  left it up to hang in the bathroom, thinking,   "Who in their right mind is going to steal a used,  dirty towel?" But apparently I was thinking wrong,   and the towel’s gone. So I have to buy a new  one now. So I've got that going for me. Like—who? What? Why do you want my   used towel? I don’t understand. It’s not  even valuable—it’s 15 bucks. I don’t know. Anyways, I'm going to go buy a new towel in  Seattle. It’s fine. It's whatever. But it's just   a reminder that I’m not in the far north anymore,  where you don’t have to worry about thievery at   all. I have to start being a little bit more  careful now that I’m coming into bigger cities. Throughout northern Washington, I had a  mix of suburban riding on busy streets and   some nice back roads with beautiful  views.

As I got closer to Seattle, I started searching out bike trails that helped to bypass some of the traffic. Before I knew it, I had already come  out the other side of the big city. Finally—finally have a decent trail coming  out of Seattle. Riding through those city   streets was kind of bad, but you know, we  made it work. And now we're on a nice path.   Follow the coast all the way down is the  plan. Super excited for it. Everyone tells  

me how beautiful it is. Rainier just  slowly gets bigger in the distance. All right, here we go. We're coming  up to the junction with Highway 101,   the Pacific Coast Highway, which we're pretty  much going to be taking for probably the next   1,500 miles—over 2,000 kilometers or so.  This road is supposed to have beautiful   coastal views. It's supposed to be amazing.  So we're going to take it. Let's see what   it's all about. I'm pretty excited for  this one. This is going to be pretty cool.

The 101 brought me to the West Coast just in  time to watch my first sunset over the Pacific. Here we are—we’ve made it officially to the  Pacific Coast. This is going to be pretty   cool. We're going to be following this  probably for the next month and a half.   Should have a lot of good views. Should be a  little bit more traffic-y than we're used to,  

but it'll be all right. But yeah, let’s see  what we can see. Just around the bend up here, over the top of this hill, we’re going to come up and   finally see the Columbia River. This is  the border between Washington and Oregon,   and there’s a huge bridge that we’re gonna cross  over. That’s kind of dangerous for cyclists.   We’re not really looking forward to it, but  I don’t know—it should be really beautiful anyways. There we go. Just across the river, that’s Oregon back there. All right, it's time. We’re going to cross the  Astoria Bridge. Not looking forward to it, but  

you know—it’s probably not going to be that bad,  right? It's only four miles. It’s not that bad,   I don’t think. It's got a mini shoulder.  It's not super busy. It's kind of cool. Crossing over the bridge brought me to the town of Astoria. As a huge fan of a certain movie, I had to make a quick detour to see a  particular house. If you know, you know.

With my pilgrimage complete,   I rode over to the nearby state park  campground to set up for the night. So I believe this is the camp for tonight. We got  picnic tables over here—this is the hiker-biker   site. There’s a bike rack back there. I couldn’t  figure out how to check in, so I don’t even know   if this is legit or not, but here we are. We got a  little table. There’s a fire pit back there—we're   not going to use it. But this is really cool. Back  here we’ve got a pump—we’re probably going to use   that. There’s tools—we're not going to need  those. And in these, there’s like outlets and  

stuff so we can charge stuff. This is pretty  nice for eight bucks, I’m not going to lie. It’s a bit foggy and misty this morning, which  is not ideal, but it's not super bad. We're not   getting soaked. But I've got some stuff I'm trying  to dry on the front of my bike, so we're going to  

hope that those actually dry. If not, we'll be a  little sad—because the rain is coming tomorrow.   It's going to start, and it's not going to stop,  I don't think. So we're kind of gunning it south. There's something oddly unsettling about  seeing like half of a giant rock out in the   ocean—but you can barely see it because  of this fog. Really interesting place. It’s kind of hard to believe, but this is the  first tunnel I’ve been through on the whole trip. Man, these Oregon hiker-biker campsites  are actually pretty nice. For $8,   you get—look at this. There’s nobody here because  we’re pretty much in the off-season. Rainy season  

starts tomorrow. But we’ve got tent pads that you  can set your tent on, and there’s tons of them.   Picnic tables at every spot. Fire pits at  every spot. Back here, there’s like lockers   where you can put your electronics in to charge.  There’s water. There’s showers that come with   it. We’re pretty much living the luxury life out  here—which, compared to what we used to be doing,   like, we were camping for free—but this is pretty  cool. I'm not mad about this. I think I’m going  

to keep trying to stay at these state parks  because this is where it’s at. This is awesome. All right, this is it. This is officially the  start of rainy season. It's going to be rain   on the forecast for the whole next week,  and basically the further south we get,   the less rain we're going to have. So the plan is:   starting tomorrow, we're just gunning  south. Today I didn’t go that far south,  

but the main reason for that is that there’s  a big headwind today—so why fight the headwind   when I can do it easier tomorrow? Anyway, that’s  the theory. Maybe that was a mistake—who knows? But we've got another 20 kilometers today to a  state park. Going to set up for the night there,   even though it’s not too late in the day yet.  And we're going to get wet. So let's do it. Entering Cape Lookout State Park. We're going to  set up here for tonight and hopefully it dries out  

a little bit. I'm hoping the tent site is in the  forest to block a little bit of this rain because   I'm pretty soaked through. So yeah, that’s the  plan for tonight. It's getting wetter. I'm going   to try to find somewhere dry. Hopefully they have  a picnic shelter I can chill in for a little bit. So this is one way to wake up in the morning.  It's raining still. We're all soaking wet. And   then we got this coming up—oh my God—300  meters of climbing just out of nowhere,   just to start the day when  you're already wet. Oh my gosh. All right, let’s just get this done. We're  going to try to get either a hotel tonight  

or a yurt where we can dry off a little  bit. The tent is completely soaked. We’re   drenched through. My socks are soaked. Let’s  find somewhere to dry off tonight. But let’s   get a little bit of distance in, because  to be honest, the further south we go,   the drier it’s going to get. And we  want to be dry. Let's get to California. I booked a hotel room to avoid the rain  tonight—and there’s fire trucks here,   so maybe I booked the wrong room. Let's find out. Oh, it looks like it’s going to be a nice day,   actually. I'm so happy. I did have  this little puncture last night,  

so we're going to have to fix that before leaving this room. Oh, we get some views—that’s cool. Every now and then—typically during  these steep climbs—the trail kind   of diverts onto these side roads,  and this is so much nicer. This is  

what the whole trail should be like.  The parts with the cars are brutal. After a couple of days of riding  in the rain, it was so nice to   have clear skies again. The ocean views  look a lot prettier when the sun is out. There’s a bunch of seals over here. These are the  

first seals I’ve seen. There’s a whole  bunch of them. I almost missed them. Sea Lion Caves, a quarter mile. Yeah, that fits. It is a beautiful morning today. We’re back  at it—going to do another probably 70k today,   and the weather is going to be perfect. This is incredible. Looks like we’ve got  another big bridge to go over. So I’ve been checking bike shops basically since  Prince George, British Columbia, looking for new   tires. Been in the market for them but haven’t  quite found what I was looking for. Because,  

to be honest, finding 26-inch tires is a  little harder than it used to be. But anyway,   shoutout to the guys over at Blue  Sky Bike Shop in Coos Bay, Oregon.   They had it—the Schwalbe Marathons in stock. So we  swung by, switched out the tires, and now we are  

cruising. Definitely feel like these are quicker  on pavement than the Surly Extraterrestrials were. With Trundle getting his new shoes, we  were a little bit slow today—I mean,   we were fast on the road, but we were slow  because it took time to get the new shoes. Anyway,   we’re going to just come into this state  park, get a little bit of an early rest,   set up before it's dark, and maybe  get a little bit of work done. Well, I was looking forward to that campground  shower, but unfortunately, this whole campground   is actually under construction. So they  sent the hiker-bikers to this horse camp.

Yeah, this is supposed to be a horse camp.  There aren't any horses here right now,   but some just walked through a little  bit ago. They put the hiker-bikers here,   where you can stay for just  one night. The reason being,   there’s like 30 miles to the next campsite,  so some people might get stranded. But unfortunately, that means no facilities. I guess, on the bright side, it's probably  going to be super quiet here. I’ll be the  

only one once sundown hits. Everything  else is closed — it's just day use. And yeah, so we got this nice little  spot back here. It's... it's not the   worst. But I was sad about the shower, for sure. Tomorrow, we're going to get that shower  — definitely. And it’s going to pour down  

rain tomorrow night, so we're probably  going to find a hotel or maybe get a   cabin or something. But we're going to  get that shower. We're going to get it. Well, I figured I should at least come down to the   beach for the sunset. Should be a nice  one. It’s a perfectly clear day today. So it looks like a beautiful morning today, but  tonight it is going to pour down rain. And there's   not really any good accommodations from here for  like another 100 km. So I think the goal today is:   just gun it south. 100k today. Doesn’t matter what  mountains are in the way — we’ve got to do it. And then find... like, they have  cheap hotels for like 50 bucks.  

So I think we're going to do that instead  of getting caught out in the rain tonight. Let's see how it goes. Hopefully we can make it. Unexpected problem today:   headwind is brutal here. And it’s going  to be this headwind all the way down. We’ve got another 60 kilometers to go.  I don't know if we can do it or not,   but we're going to try — and  hopefully get a nice hotel tonight. The upside of cycling during the rainy season  is that there are many beach towns with lots   of hotels discounted from their peak summer  rates. I managed to book a room for under  

$50. It was a difficult ride, but I made it — just  before dark and before the storm came through. In the morning, the storm had cleared out,   and I had perfect weather for  my last full day in Oregon. Looking back, I would say that I had a love-hate  relationship with the Pacific Northwest. For days,  

the rain was relentless. The cities were  stressful. And for the first time on the trip,   I had to share the road with heavy traffic. But on days like this — where  the sun came out and the waves   lit up — I could really appreciate  the beauty of the Pacific Coast.

Compared to the remote north of Alaska and  Canada, this section was louder and more chaotic,   but it was memorable in its own way. The  coastal views, the incredible sunsets,   and the amazing campsites all make the  Pacific Northwest coast worth visiting. Now, I had arrived at the last campsite  before the border with California. And I   could enjoy one last Oregon sunset before  crossing into the final state of the trip. But that’s a story for next time.

Special thanks to Anna Suarez, Dara, Frank  Clark, Jack Dougherty, Ken Coulter, Reid Ploss,   and Vegan Van Voyage for supporting on  Patreon. If you like the content and   would like to give some extra support to  the channel, get early access to videos,   and help keep the adventure alive —  the link is in the description below. Thanks for watching.

2025-04-27 10:57

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