Saturday June 24, 2.2mi/3.5km

Newport Yaquina Bay Bridge (157.1/140ft) to South Beach State Park Campground (159.3/33ft) (OR)

I was awake at 5am, strangely it was already light out at that hour…. Being this far north during the longest days of the year makes for confusing sunrises.

I hiked an hour back to my car, and after organizing some gear I was on the road at 6:30. It was a 6-hour drive back to Portland, where I put my car back into storage and then took the subway to Union station. I had about 30 minutes before my Amtrak train left, so I caught up on emails.

The inside of the train was very nice, and I need to remember to travel by train again. It was a very spacious and easy experience.

Basically reversing the process from 3 days ago, I got off the train in Albany, and I took the same bus back to the coast at Newport. By now it was 7pm, so I hiked 30 minutes to the closest campground. First I had to hike over the Yaquina Bay bridge.

It was a very tall bridge so ships could pass underneath, in the view from the top of the bridge towards the sea was spectacular.

On the other side of the bridge I got distracted by the Rogue brewery. They make some famous and very delicious beers, so I stopped in for a pint!

From there I had 15 minutes of hiking to the South Beach State Park.

Once I was in the State Park, all the trails were paved and went through these dense coastal forests. Neat!

It was a huge Campground, but eventually I found the hiker/biker site, and setup my tent next to a few other human-powered adventurers. It was only 9pm but I was exhausted from a long day of travel, so I instantly fell asleep.