Could not have been a much better campsite last night. I had the whole lake to myself, and the Milky Way was amazing, the wind was light, it was fantastic. I enjoyed some light traffic riding on the rolling hills onto Florence. I resupplied at the Safeway and filled bottles at a nice park. They must have trouble with people trying to camp there. There were hilarious huge no bikes signs on the bathroom doors. And big no camping signs. It also said the doors automatically lock at a certain time and there's a release button on the inside if you happen to get locked in. Pretty neat, much better solution than just leaving them locked all the time. The terrain was quite hilly and curvy and my shoulder appeared and disappeared without warning. Traffic was slow to increase but like yesterday got much worse in the middle of the day. I managed to make it to Heceta Head Lighthouse via a tunnel and long narrow bridge, all downhill thankfully. I walked the half mile to the lighthouse and it was worth it. The rocky cove and beach was beautiful. I had a really steep climb up out of there though. More rolling hills, gutter riding and truck dodging. I rolled into the little town of Yachats kinda bearish on humanity's future as an intelligent, caring species. But there were two roads on each side of the river that looped around and fronted the ocean and it was very nice to sit there on a bench and look out over the sea. I ate a chocolate bar and got back on the highway, the traffic increased steadily as the day wore on but the road passed through a continuous sparse beach cottage sprawl, like pretty much all of Florida. And I'll be darned, people seemed to respond to this. They took the cues of being in a residential area and not only slowed down but gave me more room on average. I had read about this phenomenon but always thought it was BS. But maybe there's something to it! Parked cars, sidewalks, and trees also slow people down, and there was more of that too. Occasional lower speed limits but honestly it's not enforced here, I have yet to see a cop at all. There was one 50mph sign in particular that was just before a sharp blind curve. It was just so silly I wish I could have taken a picture. Ahead of the sign there was a really sharp curve so you just saw blue sky behind the sign and after that just a cliff and the ocean way down below. For no sports car would it be actually safe to do 50mph.around that corner. Still less overloaded log trucks(they're all overloaded, always), but damn did they try. Practically every "car" in America these days is a huge truck or SUV, with blind spots for days. Probably explains a lot of what I have been interpreting as malice on their part, but I'm forgetting they can't see 75% of the world around them. Anyway this went on to Newport, and I was presented with another super narrow and long bridge, this time with bonus road construction congestion. I saw another cyclist ride up the bridge sidewalk, just as narrow and scary as the one in North Bend. Wind was much less today, so I decided, like a lemming, to just go for it since he did it first. It was a bit hairy, with traffic a a foot to my left and a foot and a half below, and the river 100 feet below on my right. I gripped the bars with white knuckles. The guy in front of me didn't even have his hands properly on the bars, he had music going on his phone, and his leg hit something dangling from his bike on each pedalstroke. A couple wind gusts almost knocked his front wheel into traffic but he recovered. I stayed steady and fought the wind without trouble. We finally exited safely, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I wanted to high five the guy or something but he rode off on the highway sidewalk and I decided to get on a side street. He never looked back either. Oh well, hats off to you Newport rider. There were cars EVERYWHERE in Newport. I thought I was smart getting off the highway but it was almost impossible just to cross random intersections, and cars kept pulling out in front of me and cutting me off. Exhausting. Back home on my commuter bike I have a sticker depicting a guy that's covered in little tiny cars that are swarming around his head like flies. That's how I felt today. Urban assault all day. Mentally exhausting. Also physically. I kept trying to up my pace to get past a section quickly if it was a bad shoulder or whatever. There were some nice breaks, including some really cool sights. I finally turned off the highway for awhile and went to see the Devil's Punchbowl. Really cool formation. I climbed up the lovely almost traffic free road up to the Lookout, which had an incredible view. I met another cyclist that was just out with her family in a car, and they offered me some free cherries so I took some. They were very nice and I thanked them profusely. I continued on through more sprawl, and went the back way through some side streets in Lincoln City close to the ocean to get off the highway. Holy crap was it hilly. Super steep hills that led right into super steep downhills, repeat. The very epitome of PUDs. Despite my exhausted state, it was really fun. The houses were all huge but tall and narrow and really close together, all had ocean views thanks to the hills. Finally I headed out of town on a long detour around the main coast highway. The road passed next to a lake and looked sorta flat on my elevation profile but it was also pretty steep rollers. This spit me back to the 101 again and I had to go through a really stupid interchange, complete with huge exit signs and the whole works. Thankfully it was just a right curve on another highway, with big shoulders. Gotta keep that traffic moving too fast at all costs.. thankfully it was late in the day so traffic was light and soon I turned onto the old highway 101 which went into the national forest and was completely deserted. I had to climb a mile past the boundary till I found a flat spot, on a big flat rock with thick moss all over it. Good enough.