Portland to Longview

To keep the riding distance to a minimum, and to avoid a treacherous ride over the Lewis and Clark bridge at Longview, I recommend beginning this segment in Portland. Once you get to Ranier, you can catch the Columbia County Transit to the Kelso/Longview Amtrak station. There is only one bus a day that makes this practical, which leaves Rainier at 3pm so you need to time your ride to get there by then.

I prefer to do the the ride section (train and bus) first so that I'm not rushed to catch either, however, timing is not coordinated with the train and bus, so you're left with the most convenient option being a treacherous ride over the Lewis and Clark bridge at Longview. For this reason, you can ride this segment in either direction or try the extension for a much more pleasurable experience.

The ride from Portland to Rainier is pretty straight forward. Follow Naito parkway out of downtown Portland until it becomes Front Avenue. Cross over to US 30 on the Kitteridge Avenue bridge. From there, you ride north until you reach Rainier. The only noteworthy places along the way are Scappoose and St. Helens.

At the north end of Scappoose, you cross the Scappoose/Vernonia highway. If you take a right here, you can head down to Chapman landing, a launch point for kayakers exploring the Scappoose bay.

St. Helens is a tiny but charming town with several old buildings, most recently made famous by the filming of the movie Twilight. There’s a small museum highlighting this. In the summertime, there are concerts along its ideal setting along the Columbia river.

In Ranier, you can head to the Columbia County Transit Center, where you’ll catch the Line 5 bus over to Kelso/Longview. Be careful to board the right bus as this is a timed transfer point and several busses can arrive simultaneously. Since the last part of this ride is simply a bus transfer to the train, you could simply catch the Line 5 to St. Helens ane the Line 1 or Line 3 back to Portland if you didn’t care about making the final connection of this segment.

Finally, there’s the option to bike the Lewis and Clark bridge to Longview, but the bridge is not designed to allow a pleasant experience for cyclists, and the ride through Longview to the train station is almost entirely industrial. I only recommend this for those intent on doing all the segments of the Seattle to Portland ride to completion.