The Good News is we are in Florence! We have successfully completed our transcontinental crossing.
The bad News is this morning as Roy bent over to put yellow nylon rain covers on my panniers for visibility, not because we were expecting rain, his back stabbed him in the back. He was a hurting puppy all day.
Although he could barely throw a leg over the top tube, he insisted that he could ride today. Today was actually one of our longer days because we followed the ACA route from Eugene to Florence, which is 78.75 miles instead of 60 by the highway.
We have managed to make it to the west coast without figuring out the street/avenue and the cardinal directions associated with same (despite the fact that the Washington quadrants give us no trouble). So we did our usual misunderstanding of the initial directions.
Once we were underway, today was a reflection of our entire journey. We were on bike paths to start with, we were on straight level roads going past grassy fields, we were on rolling roads passing apple, peach, and nut orchards. We climbed a low pass. We had tail and head winds. We had open sunny roads and cool shady ones. We passed several parks and small country stores. There wasn't too much traffic, but we had logging trucks. We followed streams. Toward the end of the day we had a river on our left and a train track on our right. It's a very comforting position because neither one is likely to make a sudden steep ascent.
At 11:15 a.m. we were in Low Pass, Oregon. We saw Donna's Cafe. I insisted it was time for lunch.
Inside was a gem of a waitress named Jewel, who prescribed Aleve for Roy's back and homemade peach pie for dessert.
We both felt better after that. The blackberries were ubiquitous and we stopped for some. It was a really pleasant day and route.
There were places that had been clear cut and places where little trees were growing back.
About 5 p.m. we finally reached Florence and paused for the obligatory selfie.
We had a wonderful celebratory dinner at La Pomidori Ristorante. Afterwards, we headed to the Safeway for some pain relievers. Roy was delighted to discover a shopping cart that needed to be returned. He used it as a walker.
We don't know what tomorrow holds. We will play it by ear. But we are very happy to have completed our crossing!