Over the Cascades to the mouth of the Columbia.

Friday 7 August - Day 11
Walla Walla, WA to Astoria, OR: 355 miles

Woke up this morning to rain again. Seems to be a reoccurring thing for us. We decided to get wet early. As we rode west of Walla Walla the cross winds were beyond description. Doug got tossed around like gnat (his bike weighs much less than Shawn's)...but don't worry, the wind beat the crap out of Shawn as well. We dealt with wind and a light rain for the better part of 100 miles first thing this morning.

We rode through the Yakima valley passing many orchards, vineyards and fields of hops. Once we got west of Yakima, we climbed into the Cascade Mountains. The Cascades are beautiful...they would have been even more beautiful but the mountain tops were cloud covered. We rode right past Mt. Rainier and Mt. St. Helens but couldn't see either or them due to the clouds.

Here is a picture from the Cascades. This was taken right before we went over White Pass (elevation 4,400 feet):

This is a picture of a waterfall from just below the pass. The water dropped thousands of feet (couldn't fit it all in the camera lens):

We eventually crossed over the Columbia River and entered Oregon. It was raining and Shawn couldn't snap a picture of the welcome sign. Here Gumby is showing you the bridge that spans the Columbia in Astoria:

Astoria was the winter headquarters for Lewis and Clark and was the point from which they turned around and headed back east to report on their findings. The city is very old and was at one point a very wealthy town. In Astoria the Columbia empties into the Pacific. Given our location in the town, we did not get to see the ocean today! We will hit it first thing tomorrow morning.

Astoria has a well preserved waterfront lined with a boardwalk and pier system. They have a trolley that runs the length of the boardwalk:

This is an old floating lighthouse that is docked in Astoria. The two masts have lights on top:

We are hoping for nice weather tomorrow. We will leave Astoria and enter on to the Pacific Coast Highway. We plan on running the PCH the whole length of Oregon and ending up in Crescent City, CA tomorrow night. Crescent City is the gateway to Redwoods National Forest.

By the way, we did ride through Sasquatch country today, but have no sightings to report!