Day 19 Wilamette State Park to Salem: A change of plans

July 22, 2017

Willamette State Park - a great place to camp, but only if you are a hiker/biker!

Before I talk about today, I need to finish last night. I had finished the journal for that day and put everything away when another cyclist pulled into our site. Celismarie was riding up the Scenic Bikeway from her home in Eugene to Champoeg where she was going to meet up with her husband. She had never done any touring and decided that she wanted to give it a try. We were impressed with her gumption to just get out and go for it! She didn't have all the proper touring gear, but was making do with what she had and having a great time. We loved chatting with her!

Also, while we were cleaning up from dinner, a couple of people came by, looking in the bushes for...you guessed it, a missing disc! Jim sheepishly told them about our adventures with the disc and the guy was just happy that Jim could show him where it landed. I turns out it was his favourite one and he was out practicing for an upcoming disc golf tournament - go figure, disc golf is big stuff down here! I'm just glad he wasn't annoyed with us for playing with it!

Before getting ready for bed, we spent some time going over a brochure about what was happening in Salem. Well, what do you know? There was a Brew and Bite of Salem happening this weekend, as well as an Art Fair and Festival! When we started out on this journey, we said that if we found something we wanted to stick around for, we would do that, so the plan changed to spending a couple of days in Salem checking it all out. We would try to find accommodations when we got to Kaiser in the morning, as the reception at our camping spot wasn't the greatest.

We all turned in and were hoping for a good, quiet sleep, but apparently the park is also open for group camping and there was a pretty lively group having a good ole party that lasted well into the night. Good thing we had our earplugs, that's all I can say!

Getting up early in the morning, we packed up and said our goodbyes to Celismarie (looking pretty fashionable for a bike tourer, I gotta say)

Looking awfully put together for a biker in the morning!

and our buddy Gerald and his dog, Roxie. They had been camping at Champoeg with us and were going on to Independance today, so it looks like we are parting ways now.

It was a short short ride into Kaiser and along the way we saw more beautiful scenery, including a farm filled with perennials, many of which I used to have in my own garden.

Getting into Kaiser, we spotted a coffee shop with wifi and pulled in for second breakfast. They had the most enourmous cinnamon rolls I have ever seen! Fortunately for us, there was one left, so we split it - yum!

Satisfied, I logged onto the internet and found a hotel near to where the two events we wanted to check out were located. Although The Grand Hotel was a little more pricey that we would normally want to pay, we figured that we should spend the extra money to get ourselves into the right location.
We showered, changed and went to check out the Brew festival at Riverside Park. It was early in the afternoon and not much going on at this point, so we had a little snack, tasted a brew and headed back to our hotel for a nap. The evening performances looked interesting, so the plan was to return later when it cooled down a bit.

When we got back to the hotel, it was time to get a few chores done. The hotel had laundry right on our floor so Jim got that started while I did a little more route planning.

Thanks, Cary, for the quarters! As you can see, we are putting them to good use!

After all that work it was time for a siesta, something we are finding quite important on these hot hot days. Refreshed from our nap, and appreciating the slightly cooler weather, we again grabbed a couple of brews (you have to try these things when you can)

for dinner we had BBQ pulled pork and Hush Puppies - hey Annie, they were delish!

and found a spot to sit and enjoy the music.

Lots of rides for the kiddies. Anyone who knows me, knows that the Ferris Wheel is the most scary ride of all to me!

The two big acts for the night were Heart and Arrowsmith tribute bands. We really enjoyed the Heart group as their lead singer was pretty fantastic - I don't know why she isn't recording herself, but wow, could she sing those tunes to perfection! After that, it was a little disappointing to find that the Arrowsmith group was not quite as good. However, the music was fun and the beer was still cold. We lasted until about 10:00, then headed back to our room for a good night's sleep.

PS
A couple of notes about the journal and posting. I post when we can, and usually we get the pictures up within a day or two later, so if you are reading and see no pics, check back.

Also, I am having a lot of trouble with the map feature. It doesn't seem to like our laptop and has become such a nuisance that I have let it go for the moment, in favour of getting our entries up. If we figure out what's going on, I'lll go back and add the maps, as I always like to see where people are going.

Lastly, if you are a fan of istragram, we do have an instagram account at Jimandsueprice or on my Twitter account at Priceatanderson (hashtag #2fortheroad217), but I don't post on these as often and will try to do that once a month I think.

Oh, one more housekeeping note, Jim is working hard to make some short videos to add to the posts from time to time. If you've seen one, and want to see all of them, I think you can check on Youtube under 2fortheroad2017, or just look back through the days past and see where I've posted them in. Ok, that's it! Day is done - now on to the next!

what, another beer shot? Well, what can I say, it was hot in Salem!

Today's ride: 19 km (12 miles)
Total: 711 km (442 miles)

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