Walmart to Wildwood

Yesterday BN and I took a bike-riding adventure. We had to hurry a bit to make it to the downtown bus station to catch the last a.m. bus to Cottage Grove, which is about a 30-minute drive south of Eugene. A few weeks ago was our first attempt at this route, and that time we’d gotten off the bus in downtown to catch some breakfast. This time we wanted to get right to the bike trail, where we’d caught the bus home last time, near Walmart. We didn’t realize the bus made a complete loop tour of greater Cottage Grove before finally getting to Walmart. Now we know.

There is a wonderful “bicycle freeway” that goes from Cottage Grove all the way past Dorena lake, almost all the way to Wildwood Falls swimming hole. The Row River Trail used to be a railroad, so it’s perfectly level, smooth, lots of shaded sections, and only crosses the road a few times. Ideal for biking, and it was about 15 miles to Wildwood, with lovely views of the lake for a long stretch.

Wildwood would be a perfect, idyllic swimming hole, except the careless-teen types who frequent it leave cigarette butts, beer cans, and broken glass to ferment in the puddles of rainwater trapped up in the sunlit rocks. It took a matter of 3 minutes to fill a plastic bag with trash before we left. But in spite of that, it’s a pretty cool spot. There is an 8-foot waterfall, 15-foot cliffs to jump from into the round, deep pool, and even rumored lava tubes down below the water level. The water was very cold, but still swimmable.