Astoria, Oregon

June 13, Astoria, OR
Today, we officially started our Lewis and Clark Trail bike ride. It was a short ride today, only 22 miles. The distance was limited due to a late start from Seaside (we had to travel by cargo van from Portland) and and early PM end in Astoria because Alex (my daughter's boyfriend) need to watch the final episode of Breaking Bad. This is not exactly the day that I had planned several weeks ago.
The short day did allow us to make adjustments to bike and all of the gear hanging from the bikes. We also got an introductory test or riding in the rain, wind and cold as the weather in Seaside was far from the ideal weather in Portland this morning. Despite these conditions, we quicky warmed up on the first significan hill of the trip about 4 miles outside of Seaside. The only othe remarkable element of today's ride was the unsolicited help from two people at different points today to advise us of a bridge closure along our route well before we reached the closure. The advance notice came with instuctions of any alternate route which saved us about 5 miles in backtracking. It would appear that we draw some attention.
Given the early end of the day, we hiked approximately 4 miles in Astoria to its tallest peak and then an additional 176 steps to the top of the Astoria Column for a beautiful panoramic view of the area. What a nice way to finish off the day!!