The now tour with a Brompton twist: Willamette Valley, 26-30 June

From my last time touring the Willamette Valley: The Bantam at Albany

Summer is here, and it’s time for another bike tour. And there’s a lot of variety in this part of the world: I could tour down the beautiful (but busy) Oregon Coast, or go into the mountains, or go over the mountains into Eastern Oregon, or head north and do some touring around the lovely Salish Sea. But this time I’ll be heading down the Willamette Valley.

If you think that the Willamette Valley is boring in comparison to all the other choices, you may ask yourself, “Why?” And yes, I held that “boring” view for quite some time, especially after doing the Willamette Valley Scenic Bikeway in 2009. But over the years I’ve warmed up to the Valley’s charms–it’s flatter (though not flat) and wide open, with farms and towns, no “wilderness” or anything that pretends to be such. It’s an area more similar to the Central Valley of California or the Midwest than the “idea” of Oregon. And that’s okay.

Nowadays I love exploring the Willamette Valley, including its wine country. The last tour I did down the valley was in 2021, my first tour since pandemic. And now I’ll be doing another one. And this time it’ll be on a Brompton.

When Emee and I bought Bromptons in 2021, there was the idea of doing some kind of touring with it at some point, Scotland being the goal. We knew people had toured with Bromptons before: Russ and Laura at Path Less Pedaled wrote a guide, Heinz Stucke, the most bike-toured man who has ever lived, was riding a Brompton when he did his talk here in Portland in 2016. So I knew the bike was capable, but I needed a “nudge” to actually do it. That nudge was when the Bantam broke days before my Midweek Gorge Ride a couple weeks ago. I loaded up my Brompton with my regular camping gear. And it worked! Whew.

Heinz Stucke and his loaded Brompton, May of 2016. Like Russ and Laura, Heinz uses a backpacking-style backpack in the rear.

Now I’ve been planning this Willamette Valley tour for a while, so I was definitely supposed to ride the Bantam. But it’s still in the shop, so the Brompton will be pressed into service again. Thankfully this tour is not that hilly and uses mostly paved roads. As Russ and Laura noted in their guide, while the Brompton can do a little gravel here and there, its small wheels make it more a paved road tourer than not. I did have to do a few modifications to the routing due to this, as the first day was going to see some of my favorite gravel roads in wine country. Instead, I’ll be taking the bus all the way to McMinnville to start the tour as the riding outside of that bit is okay at best.

Like the 2021 tour, this will be a strictly “inn to inn” tour, staying in hotels, with friends, or Warmshowers hosts. Due to the lack of campgrounds in the valley, inn-to-inn works best. And since I won’t be schlepping camping gear, I can pack light. Unlike the 2023 tour, I’ll be incorporating a couple ferry rides in. The Willamette Valley sees the last three “fully in-state” river ferries still in operation. (The extant Westport ferry on the lower Columbia River connects Oregon to Washington.) I’ve ridden two of the three: Canby and Wheatland. The last, Buena Vista, has eluded me on my previous tours: in 2009 it was closed the particular day I was passing by, and in 2021 it was shut down for some reason. Right now it seems to be running, so I hope it will be on Wednesday when I’d use it. (The other ferry I’ll be using is Wheatland.)

Here is a run-down of my itinierary:

1. Monday June 26: Use Tri-Met and Yamhill County Transit to get me to McMinnville, where I’ll stay the night.
2. Tuesday June 27: Ride to Salem via Wheatland Ferry, approx 35 miles
3. Wednesday June 28: Ride to Albany via Buena Vista Ferry, approx 35 miles
4. Thursday June 29: Ride to Eugene and spend the night, approx 50 miles
5. Friday June 30: Hang out in Eugene for the day, take Amtrak home

I’m keeping the mileage reasonable, as it’s the first real tour I’ve done since 2021. Hopefully I’ll be warmed up for the fifty mile day to Eugene by Thursday! And while I have faith that my little Brompton will do just fine, I definitely don’t want a repeat of my last “Now Tour with a Twist” in September 2014, where I decided to ride my Raleigh Wayfarer three speed on the Palouse-to-Cascades Trail. Somehow I managed to squeeze everything into an overstuffed Carradice Camper saddlebag, but I got a weird mechanical (threading failure on the crank), cutting my tour short. (There was a big black cloud hanging over me that year, and that was the second failure I had with the Wayfarer when out of town.) Wish me luck!

Note: Since I’ll be on the road this week and don’t have any posts queued up, this blog will probably be sparse. I do hope to get one or two “on the road” posts.

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