Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Brownsville to Eugene

After our delicious free breakfast we headed out for Eugene, hoping to avoid rain. It rained fairly hard all night, but had stopped raining by the time we left around 9:00. We found instead mist. There was also a pretty big hill outside of Brownsville which I chose to walk up. "There's no shame in walkin'," I always say. Near the top of the hill we stopped for water/Gatorade and a man driving by rolled down his window and cheerfully informed us that once we reached the top of the hill, it was a long downward slope to look forward to. Indeed there was, and it was full of pretty scenery such as this.

Coburg Road was nearly at the end of the trail, so we stopped to commemorate one of the last WV Bike Trail signs we would see.

There were a goodly number of cemeteries on the route. This was the only one we stopped at.

Nice and old.

I was interested in the mowing pattern. A walkway had been mowed, and half of the gravestones, but not the other half. I'm not sure why.

Continuing on, we ran into another biking couple, Matt and Erin from Colorado. They had begun in Tillamook and were headed to Eugene and then up over the mountains. After chatting a bit, we bid them good riding and stopped at the official end of the Willamette Valley Scenic Bikeway: Armitage County Park.

Matt taking one last trail picture.

Where we took our "finished with the trail!" picture.

Then we packed up, got back on the bikes and rode another five miles to Eugene.

Where we ran into our friends Matt and Erin again.

We checked into our motel, happy to have ridden the last 33 miles of the trip.

After showering, we found the best meal we ate on the trip and one of the best meals we had eaten in a long time. I had a Cobb-type salad with hazelnut crusted chicken that was amazing and Matt had a burger he couldn't stop exclaiming over.

Should you want to partake, visit the Sixth Street Grill. It's a bar, with interesting drink specials, but also incredibly good food.


To see the photographic record of our trip Matt posted on Facebook go here:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150240061488137.315910.633443136&l=2392c1b7c6
Don't worry, it's public, you don't have to be a member of Facebook to see it.

1 comment:

Sara K. said...

How fun that you ran into other riders. That happens when my parents do their walking tours. They love it! We had so much fun in Eugene when we were there for a family wedding a few years back. We were surprised at how much there was to do there. Had things gone differently with my mom's marriage, there was a possibility that I could have lived near there for the rest of High School, as Al had a home in Cottage Grove. I'm rather thankful that change didn't happen! And her is the weather discussion I asked for from the last post!