On Bicycling: Escape From Inferno Vegas to Roll Along Oregon’s Pacific Coast
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Shop at Jay’s Market at 190 East Flamingo Road at the Koval Lane intersection east of the Strip.
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By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher-Writer
The ocean views are so expansive, visually-dramatic and smile-evoking that I don’t even notice or feel the burn in my leg muscles as I slowly grind up another roller-coaster hill on my road bicycle along Pacific Coast Highway route 101 along the Oregon coastline.
It’s the best artwork in the world, natural scenery of an amazing array of landscape features from oceans and large trees to beaches and dunes.
They’re all knitted together in a wonderfully aesthetic way.
And the sunny, 70-degree temperature doesn’t hurt either.
I’m cherry-picking the most gorgeous natural segments along the Pacific Ocean on Oregon’s coast to bike.
The PCH is a north-south road with lots of bends and turns and a healthy number of uphills (and downhills).
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My favorite under-the-radar Oregon ocean town is the small community of Port Orford, which has a working port anchoring a genuine and scrappy town of about 1,200 or so.
If you zipped through this town on Highway 101, you might not think there are many residential homes.
But I spent Saturday evening bicycling around some legit neighborhoods that even have an official bike route running through them.
On Saturday, a local bookshop in Port Orford had its door open. So as I biked on Rt 101, I poked my nose in the open store and there was a poetry reading in action.
I was invited in and even offered pie and water.
I stayed in a motel attached to an eatery and it had a nice kitchenette, too.
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On Sunday I arrived in the Coos Bay-North Bend area to anchor myself for eight nights at an AirBNB at a lovely guesthouse tucked on a steep, forested hill overlooking a river, bay and even dunes where quads are flying through the sand at a national dunes preserve.
In 1989 during a cross-country solo bicycle ride and bike tour down the Pacific from Seattle to San Francisco, I crossed the Conde B. McCullough Memorial Bridge.
It was a ridiculously narrow bridge with zero bike lane, a short wall on the sidewalk section and a sidewalk that was also very narrow.
This is Highway 101, so you had mammoth RVs, giant 18-wheelers and logging trucks rumbling literally inches from you as you crossed this bridge.
And 35 years later in July 2024, not one iota was different from this bridge that offered a terrifying experience for bicyclists.
Coos Bay has a funky Empire District that I biked through to reach a small fishing village named Charleston.
I thought Bill Walton would have loved this tie-dye store. RIP Big Man.
Back on Highway 101 were those dunes and I enjoyed biking on the federal dunes road that had access points for campers and their sand-eating quads to the dunes.
One camp area even had space and corrals for horses.
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On Monday, it was off to Newport, home of two of my favorite businesses — the Rogue brewery and a fun, author-themed hotel called, Sylvia Beach Hotel.
Rogue serves up my favorite beer by far — the hazelnut brown ale. It’s a world champion beer. That’s not my opinion. The hazelnut brown ale nectar really is a world champion beer. The sign says so.
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The drive to Newport included a visit and stop at Cape Perpetua, a dramatic section of the ocean-view land along Highway 101.
It’s mesmerizing.
The bridges of 101 can be seen from many angles.
