Portland to McMinnville

Today is the start of the 550 mile tour out to the Oregon Coast and back to Mount Shasta. McMinnville is about 45 miles away which is perfect but there is no camping around there that was listed on-line. Chris suggests checking our airbnb.com where people list rooms like a B&B. I find one that looks nice for $60 and book it.

There were surely better ways to get to McMinnville but with my GPS not having a complete map set and me not being prepared with more detailed maps I decided to stick with the main road which is 99W. It is pretty busy and with the July 4th weekend coming up it was a non-stop parade of pickups with trailers, RV's, cars, and tractor-trailers.




Getting close to McMinnville now

Downtown McMinnville







I meet up with Marty and Paula my airbnb hosts. The "room" turned out to be the whole upstairs including a den/sitting room, a "Sun" room, bath and bedroom. Everything was very clean and tastefully decorated. There is no TV in your room if that is something important to you. The bathroom has a shower with no bath. I loved my stay here and felt very welcomed and quite at home. Paula and Marty also accommodated my touring bicycle. On top of this, the location makes it a ten minute walk to downtown McMinnville which has to be one of the top small city downtowns in the US. My only regret is not getting to sample local wines which appear to be in abundant supply with many wineries close by.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Florence (Honeymans St Park) to Bandon (Bullards Beach St Park)

Image
This was about a 75 mile day. I got out of Jessie Honeyman's State Park before any of the other cycle tourists got up. It must have been the lack of coffee but I suddenly realized that Oregon's rumble strip is the best one for cyclists. It seems they can paint and somehow pattern the blacktop all in one process. Plus, it is narrow, does not extend into the shoulder where cyclists ride, and also is not so deep like some that almost knock you off your bike. Anyhow, kudos to Oregon Transportation Dept for this design and hopefully other states will copy it. This critter had been hit by a car but was still alive. I thought it was a beaver at first but then realized the tail indicates something else. This thing was pretty big at around 7 - 8 pounds. Anyone know what it is? Gardiner has to be one of the saddest looking towns along the Oregon coast. The only people I saw were digging out in the mud -  I am guessing for clams. I finally made it to Reedsport and sto...
Read more

Things I learned on this Trip

In no particular order and in addition to this previous blog : Nescafe instant cappuccino and mocha are great camp fare but only seem to be available in Canada.  Wish I could get it here in the US too. Talk with your riding companions about the route every day before you ride.  What will the lead person do if he/she decides to deviate?  How do you communicate stops?  What to do if separated (cell phones are not completely reliable)?   Decide if you can ride alone or not BEFORE the trip.  Understand what your companions want before the trip.  You may not be a good match, for instance, if you want someone within sight all the time and your companion is much faster and does not want to wait all the time.  This is the most important dynamic to talk about especially if you are not comfortable route finding alone and are potentially slower than others and in a small 2 - 5 person group where it is very easy to get separated during long days and i...
Read more

What Cyclists Talk About

Image
Compilation of videos about what cyclists say. This is not too far from reality. Warning - this picture has nothing to do with the video so don't look for this because it is not in here.   Mt Girls Say   Tri Version   What Aussie's say Mt Biker's Dumb Comments - very staged and idiotic but a few funny lines....
Read more