A few months ago my friend Deb and I were talking about doing a riding adventure in Portland. To make it even more fun, we decided to take the train.
Fast forward to today, and we have successfully completed our adventure. It started with Deb boarding the Amtrak train in Tacoma (where she lives). I rode Grayson, my road bike over to the Olympia/Lacey station, and got on the same train. Interestingly, it was not the Talgo. It was one of the regular old Amtrak trains (no double decker though, that’s the Coast Starlight). What was significant about that was that the baggage car door is up much higher than the Talgo cars. Good thing I wasn’t riding a heavy bike!
I found Deb in the train car, and we settled in for the ride to Portland. The time passed quickly as we had to catch up on all of our trips (last time I saw Deb was when I was housesitting in Tacoma for my niece).
Soon we were pulling into Union Station in Portland. We fetched our bikes and got ready to ride. Deb had created her first RWGPS route for our ride today. I only had one request, and that was to ride across the Tilicum Bridge. She put it into the route. The whole route would be 35 miles and about 2800 feet of elevation. Perfect for the amount of time we had before catching the train home at 5:55pm.
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Heading out on the route.
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We had our biggest climb right away. It was over 3 miles and 1100 feet with an average grade of 5% (but at one point I saw 14%). We were going up Cornell Rd. There are two tunnels. BUT, the bike route goes around them.
We weren’t done with the climbing though. This was where I noticed the 14% grades. I would have liked to have Wanda’s gearing. At the top I noticed we came out onto Skyline. We might have had less climbing if we had just gone to Skyline instead of turning onto the road we came up. Maybe…maybe not, but it was pretty.
We came down Skyline, and I to Washington Park. We could smell the zoo as we rode by.
We stopped for a break at the Rose Garden. There was a food truck there, so we got some food.
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| View from the Rose Garden |
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| Hotdog! |
We rode past the Japanese Gardens, and the rest of the way through the park. That was the end of our first “loop” (it wasn’t really a loop, but we were back toward downtown). Next up was the Terwilliger Trail. It was another climb, but not as steep as the first one. After turning off Terwilliger, we made our way to the Riverview Cemetery. It’s a lovely ride by all the dead people. Many of Portland’s founders are buried there.
Descending out of the cemetery, we came down to the Willamette River. This was the flat section for the day.
Now it was time to start segment three. We would cross the river on the Tilicum bridge. Tilicum means “For the People”.
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| The bridge is only for bikes, pedestrians, and public transportation. |
On the other side of the river, we worked our way to Mt Tabor. The plan was to ride to the top, but we went part way, then changed our minds. We were getting hungry, and wanted to have time to eat dinner before we got back on the train.
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| The start up Mt Tabor |
It was mostly downhill back to the river where we went across on the Hawthorne bridge. Deb had a place in mind for dinner, so we worked our way through downtown to get there.
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| Hawthorne Bridge |
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| China town! |
We had a filling dinner of burgers and sweet potato fries. Deb wanted to go to the New Seasons Market next door. I watched the bikes as I had no more room to carry anything anyway. It was just a
Couple miles back to the train station.
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| Union Station |
We got the tags for our bikes, and headed out to the train when it was time. This time it was the Talgo train. It looked like an on-time departure. Alas, in true Amtrak fashion, it was not to be. We ended up departing about 30 minutes late.
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| Time for a little nap. |
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| A good day on the bike! |
This was a lot of fun. Now we are thinking of doing the same thing, only going to Seattle. I think the cycling infrastructure is better in Portland, but Seattle is coming along.
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| Today’s route |
