Best Short Camping Tour from SE Portland: Mellow Ride on Paved Paths?

[djkenny]

Hello,

A good friend of mine, who is pretty uncomfortable with cycling in traffic based areas...is down with a bike tour/camping trip..."if" we can accomplish getting to a paved trail and arriving in a pretty camping zone.

Kind of a break in to get her used to riding...and heck, it will be a good practice run for me to take camping good in panniers and sleeping bags rolled up on the back of my bike too.

Anyone have a recommendation that might involve a shirt jaunt on Portland roads to a trail that will calmly take us to a lovely area to enjoy for a day or two?

10, 15+ miles of riding is fine.

We are interested in combining transit like Max and/or busses as needed too.

Thanks!!


Kenny

[scholzj]

take max as far west as possible, ride to Banks and take the Banks Vernonia trail to Stub Stewart State Park. Todd Fahrner of Clevercycles did this ride and has a write up of it at the clevercycles web site. I have ridden the Banks Vernonia trail and it is very very nice and the campground is pretty cool too. They have hiker biker camping for $9.00 per site and you can easily get two tents on one site. anywho, that's my two cents.

[djkenny]

That is a great idea. I was looking at his post about this camping trip sometime back.
Hot Springs also sound nice, I am not sure if there is a quiet/chill ride to any though?
Thanks!
djkenny

[djkenny]

this has me concerned. back to the the hot springs option or other camping that is chill to ride....(?)

http://bikeportland.org/forum/showthread.php?p=6138

[Bent Bloke]

Breitenbush isn't close, but the hot spring might make up for that.

You might want to consider Oxbow Park, on the Sandy River just east of Gresham. A steep climb out, though.

And Milo McGiver State Park near Estacada might be something to consider. I've never been there, but Cycle Wild does camping trips there. They have a trip planned for Stub Stewart in a couple of weeks, if you're still considering that.

Champoeg State Park is also relatively close, west of Wilsonville on the south side of the Willamette. Jonathan did a story on his camping trip there over the July 4th weekend.

And there are some campgrounds in the Gorge that aren't too far.