Cycling the Pacific Coast by Bill Thorness

Author:Bill Thorness
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mountaineers Books
Published: 2017-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

A Canadian family traverses the busy McCullough Memorial Bridge at North Bend.

Gear down for an initial climb onto Seven Devils Road. Look for the demarcations of each devilish hill painted on the road surface, starting with the first one almost immediately. One has a false top, another has the wry scrolled commentary “Don’t you love it?” The rural route is signed as the Charleston-Bandon Scenic Loop.

A welcome comfort stop appears at 33 miles as you pass the South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve, nearly 5000 acres. The informative free visitors center is worth a stop, and there are trails to overlooks of the estuary, which is a regularly flooding spongeland where salt water meets fresh. A half-mile roundtrip clamber takes you down to an observation deck at Hidden Creek Marsh. Look for black-tailed deer or the somewhat rare green heron, whose home is here. Perhaps the bird’s color comes from a diet of the native green crab found here. In this deep forest ecosystem, every shade of green seems represented.

The last part of Seven Devils Road is flat and rather boring. The rest is trees growing up to the road, except for the timber-company clear-cuts, where you can see distant vistas. That’s one way to create views. The side road ends with a fun downhill run to the Bandon Marsh National Wildlife Refuge.

Rejoin the coast highway for the last 3 miles to Bullards Beach State Park, which has a mostly paved, bikeable trail to the beach beyond the large campground. Watch for horses, as Bullards is one of three horse campgrounds along the Oregon Coast.

To view the 1896-era lighthouse, take a 2.6-mile pedal along the Coquille River to the end of the road. The light station sits on the north jetty overlooking the mouth of the river at Bandon. From lighthouse to lighthouse, park to park, sunset awaits.

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Depart Umpqua Lighthouse State Park campground on Lighthouse Rd.

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