Cape Blanco

That same Seven Devils Road day got much better. We stopped for lunch in an adorable town called Bandon and had bad mexican food and then we had good esspresso. I talked to my mom and she said surely we must have gone nearly 500 miles, and I told her I thought we were at like 480 or something. Turned out, when I got back to my bike, we had gone 509. So somewhere on that horrible road, we passed the 500-mile mark. We high-fived each other, and then climbed on our bikes.

The second half of the day took us through relatively flat farm land, a welcome break from the constantly dramatic Oregon coast. We rode past llamas, sheep, cows, through teeny weeny towns (my favorite being Denmark), and the road was fairly quiet. The miles flew by. As we turned onto the small, two lane country road that would take us the five miles into Cape Blanco State Park, Lyon and I pulled up next to each other and rode side by side, something we don't get to do very often. The road was quiet, it was dusk, and as we turned a corner and coasted down a hill past the park's welcome sign, the land opened up and we could see for miles. Then, the farmland and the sixes river, dropped off into the ocean, scenery that looked out of place against fields, fences, horses and a little country home in the distance. The view at the top of the bluff at the end of the cape was the most striking we've seen yet.  We made camp and took our time leaving in the morning. We explored the park without our bikes loaded down (such a treat for us) and toured an old pioneer home, misleadingly called the Hughes Home. Once I got over the fact that we were not at some little-know isolated mansion of Howard Hughes' it was pretty cool.

Now, after a difficult ride yesterday, we are in Gold Beach at a motel, recharging. Today we will spend the night at the last campsite before California.