Only two days to go before I hit the Pacific! Since the last two days were long days of around 100 miles and since I have plenty time to reach Seattle in time, the coming days will be bit more relaxed with shorter distances. Today I'm riding straight north, to turn west towards the coast tomorrow.
First part of today was a flat and windy ride towards Corvallis, where I had a very long lunch. The second part of the day was a more rolling terrain, with steep yet short climbs from time to time. Being this close the coast the wind is off course permanently on.
At the end of the afternoon I reached Rickreall, where I planned to camp at the county fairgrounds. Unfortunately just this weekend there was the county fair at the fairgrounds, so camping was not possible. The options at this point were to continue more than 20 miles for the next camping possibility, go more than 10 miles off route for a RV campground in Salem, go 5 miles off route for a very expensive hotel or try a WarmShowers host 5 miles back. I tried the last option and luckily Curt and Barbara were able to host me in Independence.
After riding back the 5 miles this time with a tailwind, Barbara welcomed me and showed me to their guestroom. After a shower I had a drink with Curt and Barbara before dinner. Things got really interesting when Barbara went to walk the dog and told Curt: "Why don't you show him my plane". It appeared that they live in a so called airpark. In the front of their house they have a garage and road for their car and in the back they have a hangar and taxi lane for their airplane. The taxi lanes lead directly to the neighboring airport. Curt showed me Barbara's plane and the kit plane that he is currently building. Then he led me to a hangar at the airport and showed me a half finished replica of a DeHavilland WW1 aircraft. Being an aerospace engineering I was amazed by all this and actually pretty happy that the county fair was exactly this weekend... After all the airplanes it was time for a very nice dinner and after that off to bed, with probably lots of aircraft dreams :)
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