Welcome to Boring, Oregon.

nev

Super Térrarist
From Astoria we headed south to Newport, which wasn't far, but there were plenty of little forest roads to be explored on the way. There wasn't much in the way of spectacular views of anything, or even really any interesting towns along the way, but there was a lot of this

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and this

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and this

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Jo probably didn't enjoy it much as you can see from this

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stopped for a break in a small hamlet on the coast. It was an other miserable day as you can see.

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followed by some more of this

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cold and windy at the beach in Nye, but there were still people enjoying the start of summer

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A house fit for royalty, or the King of Moomba, at least

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Plenty of activity on the waterfront on the river side

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and plenty of activity in the Rogue Brewhouse (and pretty good food too)

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nev

Super Térrarist
We stopped 2 nights in Newport. Arrived on Thursday and on the Saturday we were due to take the bikes back to Portland. On the Friday we had a bit of a relaxing day. Walked around town again in the morning.

This is the 101 hwy bridge over the river in Newport

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This lump of concrete was part of a 165 ton dock which broke it's mooring during the 2011 Japanese earthquake/tsunami, and floated across the pacific and washed up on the beach near here.

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The local weather conditions seemed to encourage a fog over the shore, this was about 11am.

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A 200km round trip for lunch, which ended up being at a cafe/tavern in Alsea. Lovely little spot and seemed to be a local destination for bikers.

On the way back some more roads to explore

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nev

Super Térrarist
All good things must come to an end, and it was today, the 29th day of bike hire that we had to return the bikes to MotoQuest in Portland.

We headed east in the morning, and then north, back through more of this.

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After lunch in McMinnville we went to the Evergreen Aviation Museum, which is only about 45 mins out of Portland.

They had an assortment of aircraft of different types and sizes

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and even a motorcycle

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but the centrepiece of their display, and the main attraction, was Howard Hughes' sea plane the "Spruce Goose", which is way too big to be captured in a single frame in the available space inside the museum, but here are a few different angles to help you get the idea of the size of it. This plane was built from wood because metals were in such short supply during WWII. It was designed to carry 750 fully equipped soldiers. Only one was ever built but the war was over prior to it ever being required. It only ever flew once, for approx 1 mile at a height of only a few metres.

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and inside

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The other main attraction at this museum was this immaculately maintained and restored B-17

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It is still fitted with all machineguns in position,
Four forward facing, and 6 rear facing.

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nev

Super Térrarist
A second building at this facility housed a space museum.

A 1:1 scale mars rover

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A russian Foton

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Which with this hatch removed bears an uncanny resemblance to the Star wars Death Star.

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A german V2 rocket

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Various other rockets

USA


Nuclear warheads.

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moon lander replicas

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SR-71

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and other jets, and 4 wheeled jets (This vette was owned by the fighter pilot after who this museum is named)

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A very nice touch, the entrance road was painted up as a runway

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The third building on the site was a waterpark. Love the 747 on the roof being the start point for the waterslides.

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There were also another 20 or so aircraft of different types mostly airforce jets too big to fit into the available space which were scatttered around outside the buildings.
 

nev

Super Térrarist
and then we commuted back in heavy saturday afternoon traffic to drop off the bikes.

The GPS screenshot sums up the whole bike trip in a few numbers.

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nev

Super Térrarist
After dropping off the bikes, we stayed a night in Portland, then hired a car and drove up to Seattle for a couple of days, and then drove back to Portland where we stayed a couple more days before our flights home. Here is a brief summary of the last 5 days of the trip

Our Rental car (it came as a bit of a shock to me that I am now "middle aged" but I think this makes it undeniable)

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head up display in the car was pretty neat

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visited the Pikes Place fish market

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apparently these people are queuing for coffee at the very first Starbucks coffee shop

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took an underground tour of the city (you can read more here if you're curious h)

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visited the Seattle Space Needle

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Did a tour of the Boeing Factory in Everett, where we saw the assembly lines for the 747, 767, 777 and 787 aircraft. We weren't allowed to take any photos inside the factory, but it was huge and very impressive.

Saw some other displays

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Saw a dreamlifter (this one had just unloaded a 787 fuselage. You can see the unloaded fuselages on special cradles in the hanger behind the dreamlifter).

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A snowcovered Mt Ranier in the distance behind the airport (almost blends right into the sky)

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Visited Snoqualmie Falls

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visited the Seattle troll which lives under one of the bridges across the river here.

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looking back at the downtown part of Seattle from Gas Works Park

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the weather really was so good it was almost unbearable

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More falls out east of Portland

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Multnomah falls
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Back in Portland we visited the Rock Bottom Brewery
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checked out the parks

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ate at the food carts (they had so many it was hard to choose.. the roast chicken and coleslaw at the Hawaiian food cart turned out to be the winner)

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took a city tour by Segway. (fun fun fun fun fun fun fun .. if you ever get the chance to ride these things, do it)

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visited the smallest park in the world as recorded by the Guinness Book of Records

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that's it in the median strip at the pedestrian crossing

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Voodoo doughnut shop. I've never heard of it but they had huge queues and apparently its very popular and famous. (the doughnuts were pretty huge)

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Then we got on a plane, and we flew back to LA and then back to Melbourne.

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The end.
 

nev

Super Térrarist
It's not really the end. There were a few bits and pieces that I skipped over or that I said that I'd explain later and I will start to elaborate on a few of those bits and pieces too.


More photos
This is a link to the Google Plus collection of more of my photos and some video, and some photospheres which I took on my camera, which is all sorted into days.

GPS track
This is a link to a google map showing the GPS track of our trip


Bridal Veil Falls.
In Yosemite NP, there was a waterfall called Bridal Veil Falls, because the people who found it through that it looked like a bride's white veil. A few days later outside Provo, UT, we stopped at another waterfall called Bridal Veil Falls. We joked at the time that they were pretty unoriginal with their names, and we started calling every waterfall we saw "Bridal Veil Falls". Well. The joke was well and truly on us. It seemed like everywhere we went there was another Bridal Veil Falls. We passed another in Alberta, in BC near Chilliwack (obviously named by the same Crazy Canucks who named Kamloops) there was another one, which was in a town called Bridal Veil, and one more outside Seattle which we didn't pass, and another on the way back to Portland which we stopped to take photos of. There are so many that there is a Wikipedia page set up to catalog all of them.
 
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