Day 1 - Seattle to Roseburg

Due to a change in my work schedule (working 4 10s), we were able to leave earlier than originally planned.  Chuck had gotten everything squared away at his old apartment early, and spent his last couple days in Seattle on our couch.  Since we had already seen much of Washington and Oregon on previous excursions, we wanted to make as much headway as possible towards California on Day 1, which would mean a long day of riding on I-5, the super slab.

After finishing work on Wednesday, I went home and prepared to do a mad dash to get everything packed and ready to go, so we could have an early departure Thursday morning. But, as it happened Chuck and Erica had been preparing a final farewell feast while I was still at work, and were about halfway done when I got home.  I tried to motivate, but was soon convinced that to do so would be fighting a losing battle.  So we had a relatively relaxed and gluttonous evening, and agreed that we might not be leaving as early as we'd hoped.

 We got up early the next morning and got everything put together, but like always, it took longer than expected, and we finally were on the road around 10:30.

Finally loaded and ready to roll

Though we were under way, we weren't fully done with responsibilities.  Chuck wanted to stop and say goodbye to his grandfather before leaving for good, so about 45 minutes later, we stopped in for a cup of coffee.  It was a nice little visit, Chuck's grandfather told some entertaining stories, some bad jokes, and not so subtly admonished us for being underachievers (to be fair, he was addressing Chuck, but the message applied to me as well.)

Soon enough, we were back on our way, with a quick stop at Subway to get something in our stomachs.  It had been a while since I'd eaten at a Subway, and the selection of $5 footlongs has apparently been drastically reduced. I misread the menu, and paid $6.50 for a turkey sub. It was not worth it, but it was at least something in my stomach. After our disappointing meal, we got back on the road, for real this time.

Somewhere along I-5

Most of the riding was unremarkable, as freeway riding tends to be.  We stopped in Kelso to gas up and take a break, but were back on the road soon enough.  We'd hoped that we'd be able to make it through Portland before rush hour hit, but it turned out that the vagaries of fate were not in our favor.  We made it across the bridge and into Portland without issue, but once we hit the area of the city center, it was stop and go.

We crept along at a snail's pace, the heat of the sun and our engines effectively baking us evenly on both sides.  Our clutch hands were sore, and the unrelenting nature of the traffic jam became less bearable as we inched our way forward.  We pulled off at a rest stop outside of Wilsonville, which is more or less the outskirts of the Portland metro area.  Fortunately, that also heralded the end of rush hour traffic, and after a nice break, we were able to go at highway speeds again.

Somewhere in the Willamette Valley

We weren't sure how far we would make it that night.  Our gung ho target was Grant's Pass, the juncture where we would leave the boredom of the interstate for the joys of scenic byways.  We may have been able to reach it had we left Seattle earlier, but that would have really been pushing it for our situation.  We instead chose Eugene as a more realistic goal.

By the time we were close to Eugene though, we both agreed that we could push on farther, and readjusted our sights on Roseburg, more or less halfway between Eugene and Grant's Pass.

The sun was getting low as we neared Roseburg

I like the way this shot turned out.

We rolled into Roseburg just as it was getting dusky.  Chuck gave in to the idea to get a motel room for this night.  Normally we'd look for a place to camp for have arrangements to stay at someone's house, but for after a day full of riding, with waning light, we didn't want to have to deal with finding a campsite and pitching camp.  So we took one of the first exits to Roseburg and started making phone calls to the different motels in the area.

After calling most of the motels that came up on a Google search, it looked like Motel 6 would be our best bet.  They wanted ~$75 a night, which was more than we wanted to pay, but most everything else was coming up as $100-150.  I made one more call to a place called the Rose City Motel, and was quoted $60 for two people, including tax.  Sounded like a deal!

We made our way to the motel and then found out that they didn't actually have any double rooms available. Being that we were prepared for camping, we said that was fine, so long as the room was big enough to accommodate a sleeping pad on the floor. It turned out that the best candidate was the honeymoon suite, which was only slightly awkward.  It had a bed, a couch, a table and chairs, a kitchenette, air conditioning, wifi, and most importantly, a roof and a door.

So cozy...

There was a Safeway about half a mile away.  We contemplated taking the bikes, but it was a pleasant night and after being in the saddle all day, a walk sounded good.  When we got to the store, we wandered around thinking about what we wanted to eat.  There was a lady cleaning the deli and she apparently thought Chuck was cute so went ahead and made a sandwich for him even though the deli was technically closed.  She made it extra large, so that the one sandwich was plenty for the two of us.  Needless to say, it was a MUCH better experience than what Subway provided earlier.

The Safeway had a pretty good selection of beer so I got us a couple 22s and we headed back to the motel to eat our sandwiches, drink our beer, and figure out some of our route for the next day.  We passed out soon thereafter.