The Road Provides

Today has been a perfect day. I met my host of last night (who didn't get back until after I was in bed) ever so briefly before we both headed our separate ways. He offered to let me stay there in Seaside another night if I wanted. It was really tempting. Not only could I rest up my sore leg but I could have actually gotten the chance to interact with and get to know my host, who seemed like a really neat guy. But I ultimately decided I've taken too many rest/short days of late as it is. I felt I needed to start making ground again.

So I headed in the direction of Cape Lookout State Park, 60 miles down the road, with the intention of camping there tonight. It was warm enough and mostly clear through the day, but I knew it was going to rain in the evening, so I tried to make good time so that I could get my tent set up before the inevitable rain. With my distaste of camping in the rain, especially the clean up in the morning, I wasn't particularly looking forward to it, but I wasn't loathing it either.

The beginning of my ride was all ups and downs along sheer cliffs generally overlooking the ocean. It seemed like I was constantly climbing in order to finally crest the hill, spend just a few exhilarating minutes flying down, all so I could start climbing again. But the views were well worth it. And it felt like good preparation for the 800 foot climb up to the camp area I knew was coming at the day's end.

The latter half of the day was far flatter, riding mostly along shore or bay. I made good time, reaching Tillamook by mid-afternoon. Somewhere along the way I received a message that one of my prospective hosts couldn't "host" because he was away in Texas, but that I was more than welcome to crash on his porch. This gave me a thought, and on a whim I texted my would-have-been host in Tillamook (whose schedule ended up misaligned with mine) and asked if maybe I could just crash on his porch even in his absence. As I pulled into Fred Meyer to restock on food, I got reply. The answer was no. His granddaughter was there and she wasn't comfortable with it. ...But his other granddaughter, just a few blocks away would be happy to not only let me sleep on her porch, she'd let me take a spare bed in the house. Just like that, I went from having another ten miles to go in the starting drizzle, up a sharp rise, to camp in the rain, to having a place to stay inside.

My Easter evening completely changed just like that. While Bruce's granddaughter had never hosted a stranger this way before and was a little awkward about how to go about it, she still made me feel totally at home and offered me every possible comfort as if she were an old pro. I guess she does have a granddad with both travel and hosting experience. I got shown around, introduced to her adorable kids (the 8 year old daughter asked me to color and it made my heart warm and full of thoughts of my niece), provided a shower, given access to laundry, even trusted to be alone while they ran to the store to get food, and then fed pizza, strawberries, oranges, and cheesecake. We watched some silly reality TV and then an even sillier "scary" movie called Ouija. It was great. It was the perfect end to a 50 mile day along the gorgeous coastal scenery. Today, the road, or rather, the random kindness of strangers, has provided well.