Day 111, to Corvallis: Eating our way toward the coast

August 11, 2022

Dani walks up to a bronze ballerina sculpture in Corvallis, across the street from the Arts Center, which is inside a former church.

Thursday stats

Start: Eugene's Kamping World, Coburg, Ore.

End: Hotel Corvallis, Corvallis, Ore.

The Daily Progress: 36.6 miles

Climbed 147, descended 331

Elevation at endpoint: 255

Lodging expenses: $132, I think

Food expenses: $19 for Vietnamese sandwiches for lunch, $15 for ice cream, $50 for dinner? at the Common Fields food truck place, $50 for groceries

Wow, I'm sleepy. I forgot these critical stats:

Ice cream flavors: We went to Sugar J's Ice Cream Workshop, and I got blackberry chocolate crunch and chocolate, and Dani got strawberry jam and avocado lime. All of them were delicious — including that avocado lime.

Beer flavors: I got a dry stout, and Dani got a sour, and they were fine. Then we split a cucumber-lime-habanero beer that was ... not something either of us would order again. I guess the lesson here is: Lime and avocado work in ice cream, but cucumber in beer is weird.

Dani's daily digest

Today was a half-zero day. Apparently, half of zero is 36, since that is how many miles we biked to advance from Coburg, Oregon, to Corvallis, Oregon.

Our bike ride was flat as a pancake through the agricultural fields of the Willamette Valley. (Can't believe we made it to the endpoint of The Oregon Trail IRL!) We stopped twice -- once in the shade of the fire & rescue building in Harrisburg, and once on the steps of a church in Peoria. In Peoria, we had a brief and pleasant chat with a man named Will, who was doing some landscaping. Biking across the country has been a fantasy of his. We encouraged him to do it!

In Corvallis, we ate bahn mi that were delicious but also which left room for ice cream, which we ate in the riverside park next to a sculpture of river otters. We stopped in the Corvallis visitor information center and got two maps that led us on a walking tour of street art installations -- my favorite was the basalt pillar garden. We also popped in the Corvallis Arts Center building and took in the art there. We walked to the Oregon State University campus (Go Beavs!) and took the briefest look around before returning to our hotel for naps.

After naps, we went to yet another food truck pod (they really are quite the thing in western Oregon) for beer, food, and live music. Finally, we hit up the local Safeway for road snacks.

The weather was perfect all day. So comfortable that you were never sure if you were hot or cold.

Now time to sleep in a bed!

Dani sits at a table in front of the office of Hotel Corvallis, which is actually a motel. The office facade has a dark exterior highlighted by a large bright streak of red, orange, yellow and multiple shades of blue ending in the words "hotel corvallis."

Today's ride: 37 miles (60 km)
Total: 4,198 miles (6,756 km)

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