We planned to take a tandem trip to Italy this spring but a couple of months before our flights Odette wasn’t feeling it and after a bunch of back-and-forth we visited Rome without bikes. As part of the trade-offs we agreed to a bike trip in 2026 that we didn’t have to fly to get to. As we got further into the summer we debated a trip to the Selkirks or the Okanagan or even just Bellingham without finding something that worked for both of us. Finally we agreed on a trip to Eugene.
We plan to drive down on September 20th without time for a ride that day. We would have five days of riding and a drive back to Seattle on the 26th, another day with no riding. I booked us a hotel (the McKenzie Orchards B&B at 34694 McKenzie View Dr in Springfield.) and got to work on routes.
Here is the Travel Oregon website that we used when we visited Bend in 2024. They have four scenic bikeways out of Eugene and if the standard is comparable to those in Bend we’ll be really happy with the rides. I did notice that where the Bend rides were all loops, most of the Eugene rides were longer one-way routes. Simplistically, we can just ride the first 25 or 30 miles and turn around for an OAB route. (I need to put in the time to see if there are alternatives to get back from the midpoint if I want to avoid the same scenery in reverse.) Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a scenic bikeway between Eugene and Florence and it’s a 70 mile drive over to the coast to do something there.
Here is the current thinking:
9/21 – Covered Bridge – starts in Cottage Grove and is a 36 mile loop. I expect that there would be other short rides on RWGPS starting in Cottage Grove or maybe this would be the day for an urban ride exploring Eugene and the U of O campus. Here’s the car route from the B&B to the start of the ride – 30 miles
9/22 – Aufderheide – An OAB ride on a forest road – here is the route we’ll take. (Probably don’t want to go much further than the 30 mile point since it starts dropping after that and you’d have to climb back up.) Don’t see any other roads to make it into a loop, but it is part of the series of connector routes so there may be options I haven’t discovered yet. Here’s the car route from the B&B to the start (46 miles – about an hour.) You evidently need to talk to the hotel before parking there.
9/23 – McKenzie Pass – 38 miles. The map on the bikeways site starts east of the pass so I reversed the route in RWGPS and here is the route we’ll take. The idea would be to turn around at the summit. Here’s the car route from the B&B to the start of the ride at Belknap hot springs (55 miles – about an hour.)
9/24 – Willamette Valley – Start before Corvallis and ride to Albany and back. Here’s the route we’ll take. Here’s the car route from the B&B to the start. (31 miles, about half an hour.) (This map just starts from an intersection – we’ll have to find a parking area nearby, probably in Peoria. It ends at Burgerville in Albany which advertises NW grown, grass-fed, beef.)
9/25 – Lorane Valley Wineries – This route is taken from RWGPS but it is under 50 miles and only 2,600 ft. of elevation. Even if we skip the tastings we might think about bringing back a case of wine. It’s 12 miles from the B&B to the start in Eugene.
I want to explore downtown Eugene, but we’ll be going out to eat and Eugene on foot is probably okay. According to Alder at R&E I don’t need to worry about charging the Di2 battery. (He would expect tp get 500 miles on a full charge.) I’ll bring the charger and an extension cord anyway.
extra back-up ride:- drive to Florence (72 miles – an hour and a half – here’s the car route) and ride toward North Bend. Turn around before the climb (over Bass Arms) and return to the start then do 15 or 20 miles out-and-back on the route toward Newport. (I may do a regular RWGPS route combining the two in case we want to do this ride – or we can just do 25 miles on the Newport map.)