Dana and Nancy's Most Excellent Adventures - Part 2 DAY 2 Thursday

Thursday was supposed to be our only day of "scouting".  We got an early start and planned on first checking out the road between Cape Blanco and Bandon to see if it was suitable for cycling; Cape Blanco is the western most point in the US and we thought that it might be the perfect starting point for our cross country adventure.  Since at this point we were still planning to use Hwy 42 between Coquille and Winston to get us from the Oregon Coast to the valley, we were next planning to check out the safety of Hwy. 42S between Bandon and Coquille to see if it was safe as Lucinda and Jill had told us that the highway between Coos Bay and Coquille was not safe.  Our last chore was going to be to check out the safety of our route between Hwy 42 and Canyonville.

Our plans changed completely after we stopped into Moe's Bike Shop in North Bend (http://www.moesbikeshop.com/) to talk with the owner about our proposed plans. He really did not like the idea of us using Hwy. 42 during the summer as he said the traffic would be extremely heavy, particularly with RV's and logging trucks.  He suggested we check out Hwy. 38 between Reedsport and Elkton as he said it had a decent shoulder, was much less hilly, and had less traffic.  He also suggested the Loon Lake route, and the Glendale to Powers Bike Route.  We knew that Lucinda and Jill had driven the Loon Lake route and found it washed out with boulders in the middle of the road and certainly not passable for our RV support vehicles; the bike shop owner assured us that was only because the road had not been cleared since the winter storms and that it was always completely repaired in the Spring.

With this new information we decided to drive back north to Reedsport and drive Hwy. 38 to Elkton.  Hwy. 38 is beautiful, but it is a well-travelled highway.  We felt it was doable but Nancy thought if we are going to start that far north we should go ahead and ride the Smith River Route that was originally planned as it has absolutely no vehicle traffic and is beautiful; it's main drawback is that using it would mean our first day would be 90 miles with two long climbs.  We stopped in Elkton at Brandborg Winery (http://www.brandborgwine.com/) to find out about good cycling roads south of Elkton and were lucky enough to have the woman who helped us be an avid cyclist.  She told us of some roads but also strongly suggested the Loon Lake Route, and also assured us that the road would be cleared and very rideable later this spring.  We bought some wine (of course!) and decided we better see the Loon Lake Rd. for ourselves.