My friend Nick was nice enough to plan a route over the Coastal Range from Hillsboro, OR to Tillamook, OR that consists mainly of gravel logging roads and last weekend I got a chance to try it out. The beauty of this is the lack of cars zooming by at 55, which is pretty much what you get with any road route to the coast.
We got lost five or six times, pushed our bikes through snow for a bit when the elevation got too high, saw a herd of eleven elk, drank snow runoff, climbed thousands of feet, descended at breakneck speeds, and gorged on Safeway's bounty when we got to Tillamook eight hours later. So it was pretty rad.
I was also able to put our new Takeout basket through the paces. When packing for the trip I was kind of blown away by how much stuff fit in there:
- rain jacket
- rain pants
- pb&j (x2)
- cliff bars (x6)
- beef jerky
- chain tool
- multi tool
- inner tubes (x2)
- mini pump
- sunblock
- arm warmers
- wallet, phone, keys
I always envisioned the Takeout as a run to the corner store kind of basket, but for all day adventures it totally kills it.
Here's a few shots of the journey:



