Day 25 from Nehalem Bay to Cape Mears

It was another day of being a herd of turtles.  Since I came in so late, I wasn't able to set the bike up the night before, so I ended up spending much of the morning setting up the bike again.  The red-headed family in the next campsite over (mom, dad & 4 kids) were nearly completely packed up and ready to go by the time that we managed to head out.

Riding out from the campsite, I headed off towards Nehalem, and in search of a natural foods store, as I needed to get more nuts and dried fruit for my "trail mix"a.k.a. bonk preventer.  Unfortunately, the store that I was thinking of wasn't in Nehalem, it was in Manzanita, the previous town on 101, which I managed to avoid entirely.  By the time that I realized that, it was way too late for me to want to backtrack, so I headed onward assuming that I'd be able to find something in Tillamook.

Just after passing through Nehalem, I saw the sign for the Nehalem Bay Winery:

Nehalem Bay Winery sign

I thought that it might be interesting, but I wanted to make it all the way into Cape Mears, so didn't want to take the left turn into Mears.  Sharon did, however, and picked up a bottle of Pinot at the winery.

The next wide spot in the road was Garabaldi, where I decided that I had to stop to take a picture of the rolling stock that I saw just sitting on the tracks by the side of the road:

It's not everyday that you see this just sitting there...

Garabaldi also had an impressive (to me at least) view:

From the road in Garabaldi

Sharon and I met up in Rockaway Beach, where we were planning to go to Woody's (they're supposed to have a great pulled pork sandwich), but they were closed.  Since we were quite hungry, we went to Grumpy’s:

Grumpy's

Grumpy's is a family operation (Dad runs the kitchen, daughter works the front of the house), and they say that they work hard to keep the prices low so that locals have a place that they can go.  The food was pretty good and their prices are also quite good.  They also have an attitude that says that they're a local joint, as daughter was playfully teasing the male of the older couple that was sitting behind us - "but you didn't eat your vegetables.  And I remember that you didn't eat your vegetables last time either.  I should just keep these and add them to your plate the next time you come in..."  Needless to say, I liked the place.

When we finished there, I headed out towards Tillamook.  It was late enough that I wasn't able to visit the Tillamook Country smokehouse or the cheese factory.  In fact, by the time I pulled into Tillamook, I was pretty desperate for a bathroom, and pulled into the first place that I knew would have one - the Fred Myers.  After leaving the bathroom, I found that I was already at the "nuts and snacks" aisle, and found that I was able to get at least almonds, cashews and dried cranberries for my trail mix.  No dried blueberries this time around, but that would probably be asking for too much.

From there, I just took the turn to the three capes scenic route.  The ride out to Cape mears was really flat and pretty nice, but the headwind was fierce.  As I passed Bayocean spit, I stopped and read the sign describing the short-lived community of Bayocean park (I failed to photograph it though, which is too bad, because the story is rather interesting).

Finally I reached my destination in Cape Mears.  Wonder of wonders, I was able to take a hot shower and get comfortable.  Sharon was starting laundry, so I took all of my dirty clothes out to add them to the load.  However, this left me with only a hawaiian shirt and a sarong to wear for the evening:

It's not every day that I wear a Sarong (incorrectly)

We had a very nice dinner of salad with home grown lettuce and grilled pork tenderloin and had the bottle of wine that Sharon bought.  After she went off to bed, I stayed up with my friend. We consumed another bottle of wine and continued talking - it eventually became very drunk out, and I finally went to bed about 4 AM.

Ride: about 41 miles - no stats, because that phone had to get a hard reset, but more about that in the next episode.