We left Cape Lookout at 625AM, a great time given that we had to get up, eat, pack the tent and everything else, and feed the pooch. The ride from Cape Lookout toward Netarts was quiet and gorgeous, with no one else on the road and we felt like we had the coast to ourselves for about 4 miles. Then we had to climb a short, steep, mile-long hill to get us away from the ocean and up over the peak before we could drop down to flat land and ride the 5 miles into Tillamook. In Tillamook we tried to get a coffee at McDonald's but the lobby was closed and we figured they wouldn't serve us in the drive-thru if we were on bikes so we walked across the street to a local drive-thru coffee cart and had no problem. We had had our normal peanut butter and nutella rollups for breakfast, and this coffee 11 miles in was meant to be enjoyed but it wasn't really that enjoyable. We got back onto Highway 101 riding north, past the famous Tillamook Creamery, and started the stressful ride to Astoria. I say stressful because Highway 101 is narrow and busy, and I actually quite dislike riding on it. If it weren't so beautiful and part of the Trans Am, I wouldn't be on it. The shoulder was quite nice in places, wide and clean, but narrow, broken, and debris-filled in others and I was sweating the possibility of a flat tire all day long. Another Ram pickup truck tried to coal-roll me but he was unskilled and missed, but he did catch the sharp end of my middle finger and a few choice words. I half-expected him to be waiting for us in Garibaldi to finish the confrontation, but thankfully he was nowhere to be seen. (I hate negative interactions with drivers, and it's my way to be non-confrontational and just ignore when people do stupid stuff out on the road because a) it's my nature, b) they could be waiting for me around the next corner in their big vehicle with a weapon ready, and c) I don't want the next bicyclist to suffer even MORE at their hands because I agitated them so much. But this guy caught me on the wrong day because I was already in a sour mood and I lashed back at him. And it was like this for mile after mile, just riding with alternating beautiful and mediocre views, alternating good and bad road shoulders, alternating kind and less-kind drivers, and alternating between a good mood and a bad mood. Vanesa was kind of non-existent on this ride, not really talking to me, not really being nice to me or anyone, and not feeling like catering to drivers that gave her no space. She didn't want to be there because emotionally she had finished her ride at Cape Lookout, but she also said that hormones played a big role in her grouchy mood. We rolled through Rockaway Beach, Barview, Brighton, Wheeler, and finally, Nehalem. Unfortunately, the really good fish and chips place was not yet open as it was only about 1015 am so we went the 1/4 mile up the road to Wanda's, a GREAT cafe/bakery that we knew would have a long wait, but we hoped for some luck. No such luck. It was packed, and it was going to be a while. This was the point at which we needed to make a decision about whether or not we were going to stay and camp at Nehalem Bay State Park or continue on to Astoria, and we both wanted to continue on...I knew of a cafe in Manzanita 2 miles up the road, right on the 101 and I thought a quick in-and-out for nourishment before we started pedaling again. But. It was closed. Ugh. So we rolled down into Manzanita town, about 1/2 mile off the highway, and the first restaurant we passed was Yolk and we stopped; a person outside volunteered to me that the restaurant was great and worth the wait. So we parked and locked the bikes and went inside to get on the list. From the first moment we walked into this absolutely slammed restaurant, we were impressed with the customer service. The host addressed us immediately despite our being 6th on the list, and when we told her we were cycle touring and would sit wherever would get us in/out the fastest, she went to work getting us two seats cleaned and ready at the bar. We were seated in 10 minutes. We watched awe as the servers milled around us taking care of the customers, and everyone seemed happy and friendly despite how busy they were. Our server, the bartender (Jim) was immediately there offering us coffee and taking our order, and he was there with water and coffee refills almost the second we needed them. We each ordered the Sautéed Veggie Hash (sautéed green pepper, mushroom, broccoli, yam, potato, tofu, house-made harissa, garlic, feta, and a touch of cream topped with an egg, served with homemade oat molasses toast or a yeast biscuit), and I added a lemon ricotta pancake with marionberries. These dishes were stupidly delicious, both of them, and undoubtedly the best breakfast we've had on this entire trip. They were pricey, but completely worth it. Jim shared that he had moved to Manzanita from Portland about 2 years ago, and it turned out that he is also a bicycle tourist and has done multiple rides around Oregon and along the Pacific Coast. The host asked me how our ride has been as she was walking between tables once, and then when we were leaving she made a point to walk out of her way to come tell me that she hopes we have a great journey onward. I thought I had heard Jim mention at some point that the owners were from Portland and when I inquired as to whether I had in fact heard that, he said yes, they had. He said they'd operated a restaurant called the Utopia Cafe there for years before closing and relocating to Manzanita under a different name. WHAT?!?! I just KNEW this food felt familiar. As I had been eating the lemon ricotta pancake with marionberries, I had been thinking to myself that the only place I'd ever had a pancake similar to this and as delicious as this was at home at the...UTOPIA CAFE!!! It had been my favorite Portland breakfast place for many years before it closed in 2015 or so. In fact, it was such a good place that I took Vanesa there for breakfast on our wedding day before we headed to the courthouse. When they closed in Portland I was sad, because we'd lost a Portland tradition that was special to V and me, but now they're reincarnated, in a cute, little Oregon coast town that we can visit for a special meal now and then!!! When we left, we immediately started the 3-mile up the pretty big Neah-kah-nie Mountain, with all the cars and trucks 12 inches to our left but actually everyone either slowed down somewhat or gave us more space so it wasn't as unpleasant as it could have been. That climb is heavily treed so there's no view of the ocean, until you get to the top and then it's spectacular enough that there's a road turnout where everyone gets out to take pictures. V was still not feeling in a great mood so we didn't linger there and we pushed on. We rolled through the gorgeous Oswald West State Park, and Arch Cape, up and down one bigger and a number of smaller hills, until we reached the special place of Cannon Beach. This a place that V has come to even more often than she goes to Cape Lookout, and she and and Clint frequently, and I occasionally, came here to walk with Trasto in his last months. When he couldn't really walk, Vanesa would push him in a trailer through the sand. We'd go a mile, maybe a mile and a half, which was the limit of what my hip and knee could tolerate on the beach, and Trasto would just lay in his trailer with the happiest look on his face, taking in all the smells, and occasionally getting out to walk short distances with us or pee. V and I both have special memories of Cannon Beach with Trasto, so V wanted to spread some of his ashes here at a special point where she would often sit with him and share some of her fish and chips with him after a walk. We headed straight through town to that spot, V spread the ashes, and I got onto Google and the phone to try to reserve an Astoria hotel room for the night (you can't do it too early because you don't ever really know if you're going to be able to ride far enough to get to the hotel until you've ridden part of the day and know how the weather is and how much energy you've got, or if you are going to be delayed/stopped because of things like flat tires). I had zero luck. There were three hotels listed on Google with costs of less than $200, and all three were sold out. All the rest were 200-400+ bucks, and we weren't having that. Plus, Vanesa was just done. She didn't want to ride that day anyway, she didn't want to get to Astoria (I found this out later) that day because she wanted the last day of our trip to end in a GOOD MOOD not a bad one, and the afternoon wind had kicked up to about 15+ mph and we still had another thirty slightly hilly miles to go. So we decided to stay at the one campground Cannon Beach has, the Sea Ranch Resort RV Park. We were only 0.2 miles away so we headed over and we were given the choice of the two remaining campsites, so small they had the letter "A: by their number, as in there was a site 10, but it was booked and site 10A next to it was free. Well, each was total shit. But for all the reasons above, we weren't moving on and so we completely overpaid at $55 for this shitty campsite, tucked right between a huge RV and a low tree that we hit our head on multiple times while walking around before I got smart and hung my bike helmet from it so I wouldn't forget it was there. It had bathrooms, literally right next to our campsite, which was actually convenient and not as loud or annoying as I expected, and showers (well ONE shower) in each bathroom that were disgusting. The shower was just one half of the bathroom, with a toilet on one side of the room and a shower head projecting from the wall on the other side of the room; the floor was slanted toward a small floor drain. When I showered, I of course wore my flip flops and as I was enjoying my lathering, after about only 2 minutes, and before I was completely rinsed off, I noticed I was standing in water up to my ankles, as the hair and other shit clogging the drain was causing the water to back up all around my feet. It was SO gross. I have never rinsed off so quickly. And then I had to wash my feet afterward separately in the sink because I couldn't stand in the shower and wash off all the grossness that had come up out of the drain and been touching my legs. Yuck. So nasty!! The only recovery from that was to go get a great dinner, so we walked to Ecola Seafood and had cod and wild salmon fish and chips, with a quart of chowder to split between the two of us. The fish and chips were excellent, the chowder was ok, but kind of thin and I like my chowder THICK so you can stand a fork up in it. It was thin enough that I didn't realize that most of the clams had sunk to the bottom, so while I was disappointed when I first ate it that it had too few clams, when I ate it for breakfast cold the next morning it had thickened up nicely and was chock full of clams. Like usual, after riding, cleaning, and feeding, we found ourselves in our tent and sleeping around 630-700 PM. Having ridden 54 of the miles from Cape Lookout to Astoria today left us only about 30 miles tomorrow to finish this amazing journey. And, guess what?! Or, should I say guess WHO?! ORLANDO, GAYLA, and JETT have offered to meet us in Astoria after we arrive for lunch and then give us a ride back to Portland! Wow, it's really going to end tomorrow? Such mixed emotions are flying around in our heads.