August 25th 2023 – Hillsboro, OR

We stayed at Holly’s place for 3 days after she left. It was a welcome break from traveling. It allowed us to get a lot of practical things sorted. Every day we went for a run or a long walk to get out of the house and explore Sydney. It’s a lovely town.

I’m a big fan of MotoGP and the rest days allowed me to watch all the practice/qualifying sessions and races from the weeknd’s event in Austria. I really enjoyed that!
We are very grateful that Holly gave us this opportunity to have “our own” home for a few days.

Sunday morning, after I had watched the MotoGP race, we packed the bikes and headed to Victoria to catch the ferry to Port Angeles. We arrived at the port 1 ½ hour before departure as recommended. It allowed time to go through US customs which we had to do before boarding the ferry. Everyone at the port was super friendly and helpful, 

The ferry turned out to be a charming well kept vessel from 1959. A nice touch was that it sounded like the public announcements hadn’t been changed since the ferry entered service more than 60 years ago.

In Port Angeles the crew let us leave the ferry before any of the cars. We enjoyed being back in the US after more than a month north of the border. A couple of hours fun riding on small twisty roads delivered us at Hoh Rain Forest Campground where Katrine had booked us a spot.

The rest of the afternoon we explored the hiking trails in the area. Back in camp I donned my Adam costume and enjoyed a bath in an icy stream by our tent. I really appreciate feeling clean before I hit the sack. It makes me sleep much better.

We often encounter traffic congestion as a result of road/construction work with regulated 1-lane traffic. If we hit a long line of cars, we usually filter to the front. It’s rare that we receive negative comments for doing so. We practiced it a couple of times on the road to and from Hoh Rain Forest.

Back on Hwy 101 we soon traveled along The Pacific Ocean. Hopefully we’ll be doing that a lot in the near future. For now It was a short pleasure as we left the coast at Aberdeen and headed inland. The day’s destination was Alder Lake Park. Usually you can see Mt Rainier from the lake, but the smoke cover was too dense when we arrived. We found a really nice spot for our tent. I left Katrine to set up camp while I back-tracked to the nearest town to buy us something for dinner. It was 8 miles of beautiful curvy roads each way. After dinner we went for a swim in the lake. It was very scenic even without Mt Rainier as backdrop.

In the morning I encountered a doe with 3 fawns at the campsite.
The smoke from the previous day had cleared and I planned a route through Mt Rainier National Park. As we reached the entrance to the park it was announced that the road through the park was closed halfway because of construction work. We decided to ride as far as we could and return the same way. It was a great ride with nice views.

Returning from the park we stopped for a coffee in the quirky little town Elbe.

Later in the day we arrived at our friend @Gustavo ’s place in Hillsboro, OR. As you may remember, he was instrumental in finding the first of the CRF Rallys we ended up buying for this trip.

We have been staying here for a couple of days now and might have to stay a while longer. We are waiting for some things to show up – a few items for the bikes including new tires for my bike, but also some medication from Denmark that Katrine can’t do without. The latter have been delayed in customs, but will hopefully arrive shortly.

It is not a bad place to be stuck for a little while. We really enjoy spending time with Gustavo and his wife Lizbeth. During the day when they are working, Katrine and I snoop around and explore the area.

Yesterday we took the MAX to downtown Portland. It’s an interesting city with charming neighborhoods.
Today we spent the morning at the Shute Park Aquatic & Recreation Center and made good use of the gym and the outdoor olympic pool.