Coast2Coast Day 3: Salem to Coburg, OR; Roads Less Travelled

We started in downtown Salem and crossed the bridge.  It took us 45 minutes to find the trail to Rickreal, after having to backtrack to retrieve the hard copy map that I had dropped.  We traveled the trail and the breakdown lane for a few miles, while the morning traffic buzzed by our left ears.  Once onto the marvelous country roads there was relief and views.  Passed by some very large dairy operations, and eventually headed down 99W toward Coburg.  The bike trail along side 99W was smooth, and we passed some other riders.  (We have not seen many riders heading our direction so far.)

We turned off of the trail parallel to 99W to travel amongst farms and neighborhoods.  There was a cemetery along the way with a multitude of American flags placed at graves of veterans, the remnants of Memorial Day recognition.

Mellissa and I had at least three opportunities to take ‘shortcuts’ to get to Coburg, but we persisted to ride along the Oregon Scenic Bikeway.  We ‘coasted’ by large fields of blooming clover, with beehives placed and managed (see picture).  We biked East of Interstate 5, lunched in Brownsville at a cute cafe (Randy said that his back porch and water spigot are available to any cyclists going through town.) while they ‘bussed’ the graduating HS seniors through the town while honking horns and waves congratulated the students moving on from their K-12 journey.

We moved on to our singular climb for the day before crossing back across I5 to a very comfortable parallel route on North Coburg Road, where we connected with Cathy.  We stayed the night at the Richardson Lake Camping Grounds back West of Coburg.  Tomorrow has the possibility of a 4,000 foot climb up to McKenzie Pass, we will decide at McKenzie Bridge!