Introduction
Cascadia, what's that?
Cascadia is a region in the northwest part of North America. Because the region straddles two stable nations, Cascadia is more of a cultural and environmental concept than a political concept.
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The name Cascadia is derived from the Cascade range, young volcanic mountains extending from southern British Columbia to northern California. In the map below, red triangles indicate the active and dormant volcanoes in the Cascade range. The most recent major eruptions were Mt. St. Helens in 1980, Mt. Lassen in 1915, Mt. Shasta in 1786, and Mt. Hood in 1782.
The name is also used for the Cascadia Subduction Zone where tectonic plates collide in the Pacific Ocean, creating infrequent but powerful earthquakes/tsunamis that threaten the coastline from northwest Vancouver island to Cape Mendocino, California.
The Route
I think it's easier to visualize the route on the interactive map if you click the button in the upper right of the map and select Terrain view.
Like most of my recent tours, this tour combines several routes that I wanted to do. More than 10 years ago I biked the Oregon and California portions of the ACA Sierra Cascades bicycle route, so this year I wanted to complete that route by biking the Washington portion.
The logical starting point is Seattle because my bike and I can get there cheaply by train. At first I considered going northwest from Seattle to the San Juan islands, but I did that once before. So instead I pedaled east from Seattle to do a new route that takes me to two hot springs before joining the Sierra Cascades route in Concrete, Washington.
After crossing into Oregon I didn't want to continue south through the Cascades because I've done that twice before. I had never done the Portland to Astoria route, so I went that direction instead. It had been 22 years since I pedaled the northern Oregon coast, so I biked down the coast from Astoria to Reedsport.
In Reedsport I turned inland to follow a route that I developed recently called the Umpqua Crater Rogue alternate. This route goes up the Umpqua river to the crest of the Cascade range at Crater Lake. Then it goes down the Rogue and Smith rivers and returns to the coast at Crescent City, California.
From Crescent City I went south to Arcata, then pedaled inland through the unpopulated northwest corner of California and returned to Oregon to finish the tour.
Bike
My bike is unchanged since the previous tour except it has a new Ventisit seat pad from the Netherlands. The new seat pad lasts longer, has better ventilation, and is more comfortable, allowing me to ride longer before my butt starts to hurt.
Solar power
For the first time I carried a 7 watt solar panel to power all my electrical devices.
Alternate names for this tour
Tour de Cascadia describes this tour fairly accurately but I considered other names: 30@50 comes to mind because this is my 30th bike tour and I'm 50 years old. I can't go straight! would be very descriptive because (like most of my tours) the route is so meandering. Tour de Trees would also be a good name because most of the route is densely forested.
Schedule
The dates for this tour were chosen to hopefully avoid the worst of the summer's heat. I wanted to ride the Oregon coast in September when it's less crowded than during summer. The result was an August 16 to September 28 window that more-or-less follows the end of summer south from northern Washington to California.
My original plan was to go farther south into California to see the Lost Coast and Avenue of the Giants. But during the tour I decided to shorten the California route by turning inland at Arcata instead.
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