We did a bit more investigating on the Oregon Coast Trail last night. It seems that well over 40% of the trail is actually on Rt 101. From our experience last night, they don’t maintain shoulders for hikers. They offer no consideration to hikers at all on the highway. You’re out there with the traffic and it’s up to you to jump down a cliff if a driver swings too wide. We made the right decision to hitch last night.
I tried to find better maps than what we have downloaded from the Oregon State Parks web site. I went to the National Forest Service office and they sent me to the Visitor Center. In both cases, they told me a set of maps just doesn’t exist for the trail. What we have is the best there is (and they suck). Bunny and I headed to Double D’s for breakfast. I was hoping the restaurant lived up to its name to help cheer me up. It didn’t.
It feels like we’re not supposed to be hiking this year. Or, maybe it’s a test to see how bad we want to hike. We are failing the test. We got a small ray of hope while eating breakfast. We saw another couple of hikers come up looking disgusted and slightly worn down. It looked like they were debating whether to come in or not. If they would have turned away, I was going to go out and talk to them. They came in on their own, avoiding a shoestring tackle by an old man.
As soon as they rounded the corner coming in, I asked if they were exiles from the PCT. They were. We started talking about our experiences and discovered we were just two days behind them when we were hiking into Idyllwild. In fact, they had been right behind the guy that fell almost 200’ down Apache Falls and had been the ones to call in the SOS. They stayed with the guy for nearly 6 hours waiting for a helicopter rescue.
They feel the same way about the OCT as we do. It’s beautiful when you have a trail that is passable and sucks when you have to walk on the highway. Bunny and I had been toying with the idea of renting a car and driving around until we flew out of Portland, but, misery loves company. Jordi and Alba told us there is a local bus running along the coast. We decided that instead of walking the entire trail (which is probably closer to 50% highway walking when you include unmaintained sections forcing us back to the highway), we will hike the longer sections of trail and either hitch or bus the road sections.
Jordi and Alba are from the Netherlands but got 9 months when they entered the country to do the PCT. They made it to Walker Pass before deciding to get off the trail for a while to allow the snow to melt. They rented a car for a while and drove to Las Vegas, Zion NP, the Grand Canyon, and down into Arizona before deciding on the Oregon Coast Trail. They got the idea, like we did, from reading posts on the FB group “PCT class of 2019.” My suggestion to anyone that gets the recommendation to hike the OCT is to immediately spit in the face of the person who makes the suggestion. This is not a hiking trail. It’s a car or bike trail.
Bunny and I decided to jump ahead to a park that fits our mood. Naturally, (bah) Humbug Mountain State Park seemed the perfect place for us. The 20 miles that we hitched was almost all road walking. We did miss a couple of small sights but, once again, we glimpsed them as we sped up the 101. We caught a hitch with Durham from Portland who was heading home after his first visit to the southern Oregon Coast. Durham dropped us off at the southern edge of the park where we were going to jump back on the trail and walk at least a mile and a half to the camping area.
As befitting (bah) Humbug Park, the trail was overgrown, so we ended up road walking. 1.5 miles of road is a lot better than 21.2 miles of road. On the way in to the campground, I saw a ranger working in the maintenance area. I stopped to talk to him and find out about trail conditions ahead of us. It seems like we should get in a few days of predominantly off-road hiking before we have to jump again.
This new method of hitch/hike should work out quite well for us. We’ll get to see the major sights along the coast and keep our legs in shape when we actually do hike. We’ll also have more time to visit lighthouses and museums along the way. Maybe, I’ll even have time to get my writing mojo back. I got an anonymous comment from a reader that my writing has been pretty plain lately and I need to step back up to the plate. Alternatively, I’ve been told (commanded) to not talk about poop. It seems like it’s all going to hit the fan now.
EFG