A few of the better photos are shown below, but the entire collection is in this photo album. Below the pictures are the planning notes the show a map of the route, mileages and so on.
Here is a planning document that I put together before the trip:
Pat White and Mike Evanoff are planning a bike tour in August of 2019 along the Pacific Coast. This is a self-supported ride, meaning you need to be prepared to carry all of your own stuff and to camp at night.
Start from Seattle, Washington on August 5th.
Finish up in (or near) San Francisco by Labor Day
The Route
HERE is the approximate route on Google Maps
This shot is from the Adventure Cycling Association interactive map
For the 404 mile “Section 1” of the route, we will probably take the “Washington Parks” route around the Olympic Peninsula rather than just following the Pacific Coast route straight south. The straight route is about 112 miles and the peninsular route is 241, but we need to remove the 58 miles we saved by starting in Bellingham. So, if we take the listed 404 miles, and subtract 58 because we started in Bellingham, and add 130 because of the peninsula, we get about 404 + 60 = 464 miles for section 1.
These are the map sections that you can find on the Adventure Cycling Association page for the Pacific Coast route.
Here is the elevation for the various sections. We are only interested in sections 1, 2 and 3.
The Timing
If we ride 50 miles per day on average, the first 350 mile section into Astoria shown on the Google map above should take about seven days. The second section should be about 8 days. The third section should take 8-9 days. All told, that adds up to about 24 days. We are allowing 30 days, giving us time to stop in places that are interesting.
As we get closer to San Francisco, we can decide if we want to keep riding the coast past Point Reyes, or if we want to head inland following one of the valleys (Dry Creek, Russian River, ….) and ultimately ending up closer to Sonoma.
Here are approximate dates. We can speed up or slow down by a day or two in order to accommodate visitors. This schedule has built-in days off in Astoria and Crescent City.
Logistics for joining the ride
Anyone joining us on the ride can easily pick us up in Bellingham, Portland, or Eugene. Further south, airports get a little more spread out and farther from the route. Amtrak has some decent connections to the coastal areas. The red lines are Amtrak train routes, the green ones are bus/shuttle/light rail services.
If you want to pick us up in Astoria, there is a bus from Portland. The bus schedule is here. A few years ago, we shipped our bikes to “Bikes and Beyond” in Astoria and they stored them until we picked them up for a small fee. They will also assemble your bike if you want them to.
Eureka is easy to get to via Amtrak and it is a 35 mile Uber ride from the Oakland Airport to Martinez, where you can pick up the Amtrak heading north.
There are a number of bus services from San Francisco to Mendocino
North Bend, Crescent City, Fort Bragg and Eureka have rental car agencies, so you may be able to just do a point-to-point rental.
We use BikeFlights.com to ship our bikes. You don’t need an account, just go to the site and enter your info. We get boxes from REI or the local bike shop. It is easiest to just ship it to a Fedex facility. They will hold the bike for six days and they are normally open from early morning to early evening. If you time it right, Pat or Mike can pick up your bike and have it ready when you arrive.
We will already have a stove and cooking gear, so just bring a cup, bowl and utensils. We will also have a pretty solid repair kit, so all you will need are your own tubes, pump and tire levers.
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