Day Twenty-One: Yachats, Oregon to Morton, Washington

Today I completed my run up the Oregon coast.  The road is beautiful, winding gently along the water's edge and, occasionally, running a bit inland.  Oregon is pretty much a nanny state, though, so the maximum speed seen anywhere along the road is 55 mph -- and many, many sections have much lower limits.  So it takes forever to get anywhere -- especially since traffic generally runs ~5 mph below the posted limit.   (Contrast this with Nevada, where one stretch of road had four signs posted in very close succession: "Twisty Roads Next 19 Miles"; "Open Cattle Range Next 17 Miles"; "Falling Rocks Next 3 Miles"; and "Speed Limit: 70 mph".)

At the northern end of Oregon's stretch of Highway 101 is the Astoria-Melger bridge, which spans the 4.1 miles across the mouth of the Columbia River.  Crossing it I thought back to Day Two of my trip and riding past Columbia Lake, the mighty river's headwaters.  At the northern end of the bridge I turned right and headed east through the beautiful lower Columbia River valley on Highway 4.  An hour-and-a-bit later, I reached Interstate 5.  Although I was hoping to avoid this road altogether (having traveled it many, many times over the years), I did travel 28 miles of its length today, heading north to Washington State Highway 12.  (I guess I've already ridden I-5, for about a mile, on Day Fifteen of the trip.)  This road will take me over White Pass (elevation: 4,500') to Yakima, Washington tomorrow.  At that point I'll turn north again and head towards the Okanagan.

One recurring issue on this trip is that my camera batteries keep failing -- first in my brand-new Nikon Coolpix P330; then the spare battery I bought in Petaluma; now in my Ma's Nikon Coolpix S630, which I borrowed to replace my apparently-dead P330.  I hope the issue lies with the fact that I brought only my Apple iPhone's USB wall cube, rather than the Nikon power supply.  Time will tell; in the meantime, it looks like the remaining pictures will be taken by my cellphones' cameras.  One last Nikon pic:

Parked for the night at the Morton, Washington Seasons Motel.