Miles biked – 55

Approx Total Miles – 3113

Days to Party -13.

11/2/2009 We woke early at the campsite shrouded in a thick fog. Ryan shared a smorgasbord breakfast with us before we parted ways. We stayed off of US-101 for the first 10 miles or so, riding along a beautiful and thickly wooded side road.  We decided that we would need to get second breakfast shortly after getting back to the main road. The next town was Klamath, which had 3 exits, and few food options. After exiting on the first two and reaching only a campground and a boarded up café (still billed as being open 24 hours/7 days a year), we took a side road that led us a 1.5 miles down the road in cyclo-cross fashion. When that landed us at a dead end, the three wise bike and brewers laughed and turned around to back track the mile and a half. I, however, have an adamant refusal to double-back on roads and miles I have already travelled, and almost died while carrying my bike and panniers up a steep, rocky slope to the road. Luckily, we found a great café, fueled up, and pedaled on. It wasn’t long before we had another “must-stop!”– The Trees of Mystery roadside attraction with a giant Paul Bunyan and his blue ox, Babe.  Not only did the visitor center have outstanding free samples of homemade fudge, Tracy and I found and excitedly purchased WOLF T-SHIRTS!! We have been on an epic search to find your classic airbrushed wolf t-shirt, and we are finally proud owners. I have vowed to wear it each day of riding until the end of the trip.

At this point, it was necessary to get some more miles under our belts, so we rode on, climbing a pretty grueling hill before descending into Crescent City. There, we ate a quick lunch and loaded up at the grocery store for a camp dinner. We crossed into Oregon at sunset, made it to the Harris Beach state park campsite just after dark, and settled in for the night. We knew that the site was right on the water, and we were all excited to see what our home for the night would look like in daylight. Brooklyn to Brookings – coast to coast – in 64 days!

~Caroline

Morning at Prairie Redwoods

This road stopped being a road

Babe the Blue Ox and Wolf Shirts!

Welcome to Oregon

Miles biked – 60

Approx Total Miles – 3151

Days to Party – 11

11/1/2009 Every time we try to leave a great town it’s tough, but departing from Eureka was especially hard. Dick and Kathy led us on a short bike ride to The Grange for a delicious breakfast of pancakes, eggs, sausage and bacon. We satisfied our ferocious appetites, rode back to their house and then reluctantly pedaled away. As with many days, we had many different goals – a long shot, a hopeful and a fallback – kind of like choosing a college.  Our long shot was Cresent City, about 85 miles away.  Our hopeful was Del Norte State Park (the farthest north redwoods state park). Our fallback was Prairie Creek, about 55 miles from Eureka.

If our late start and the title of this post were not enough of a tip off, I’ll just say it: we only made it as far as Prairie Creek.  But what a beautiful ride it was.  We started in the fog of Eureka, riding up 101 along the coast and about a half hour in we got our first view of the ocean!  It was a tough riding day with lots of steep climbs but luckily also a lot of down hills.  We had second breakfast in Trinidad, a highly recommended little beach town and then loaded up on groceries for our ride into the redwoods.   We saw lagoons and elk and tons of beaches.  It was amazing.

Upon arrival into the state park we were reminded that it was bear country.  It sounded kind of ominous until we realized that it just meant we had to put all our food in a metal box.  If only more campgrounds had those for the raccoons!  The campground was a neat spot right on the edge between a elk prairie and the forest and the coolest thing about it was that we surrounded by other touring bike campers!  In the whole site, there was only one group with a car (out of 4 groups… but still).  We spent the evening making our fancy camp dinner of tuna melts and the long awaited s’mores while getting to know a fellow cyclist, Ryan, who was on his way down from Seattle to Hawaii.  He was planning on flying part of it, of course, but would be biking until at least San Francisco, if not farther depending on the weather.   He was a cool guy who had been traveling on his own, on a MOUNTAIN bike and doing a much better job of being thrifty than we have.  He did give us tips on where to get some deals on canned food though as we went north.  Ryan, if you’re reading this, we hope you had a great journey and we loved your tattoo.  Cheers!

Biking through coastal fog

Prairie Creek Redwoods

Ryan the touring mountain biker

Miles biked – 13

Total Miles Biked – 3091

Days till party – 12

10/31/2009 – Eureka was the land of fog. A strange but adorable town that we could never really totally see.  When we woke up in Dick and Kathy’s house we felt like we had so much time!  Caroline ran town to town and the rest of us enjoyed the calm of having no where to pack up a go to for the day.  When we finally got on our bikes to go out, it was almost 2pm.  We joined Caroline at Lost Cost Brewing for lunch and a sampler of their highly recommended beers.  They did not dissappoint!  There was no tour to be had, but we weren’t really feeling terribly motivated anyway so we chowed down and then went out on the town to complete a very important mission: Halloween costumes.

Since Milwalkee, we had decided we would be The Wizard of Oz.  We had red bike booties for me (given to us from our friend John Rowland) to be Dorothy, and Anders and I have found a great kids lion costume for Caroline but asside from that we are at a bit of a loss.  Tracy really wanted to wear overalls to be the scarecrow (even though in the movie he doesn’t wear them) and Anders just wanted to tape a metal funnel to his head to be the tinman.  It seemed like it should be pretty easy to pull it all together, but after rummaging through every thrift store in town we got a little worried.  Tracy found her overalls but as far as Dorothy went, I was still up a creek.

We biked back to the house (Caroline ran…another 6 miles!) and got ready for the barn party.  Caroline turned the kids costume into an awesome adult get up with the little help of a pair of scissors, Tracy put on her overalls and I put on a beautiful dress from Japan that Kathy lent me.  I decided that with my red booties and that dress, if I couldn’t be a proper Dorothy, I’d be Dorothy in Japan:)  Anders never got his funnel but decided that if we were going to be a party with everyone dressed up, he’d put on the one costume he had – his spandex.  The party ended up being a blast.  There was a bluegrass band, a bonfire, pingpong, lots of gradudate students and a keg of local brew.  Pretty much everything you need for a great party.  Costume highlights include: cookie monster, Schrodinger’s Cat, and a blue footed boobie (a very literal translation).

-Sara

Chillin out in Eureka

Lost Coast Brewing

Halloween in Eureka

Miles biked – 80.

Approx total miles biked – 3078.

Days until party in Seattle – 13.

10/30/2009  If you read the last post, you might be a little surprised by the distance we traveled for day 61.  Waking up in Laytonville, we had resigned ourselves to making it as far as Fortuna (about 80miles) and then riding then next 40 to Eureka on Halloween day.  Even that seemed like a stretch considering the day before we were wiped out after 45 miles.  We woke ourselves up before sunrise, packed up, had some Grapenuts and rolled over to the gas station for our caffeine fix hoping to get some miles under our wheels as soon as it was light enough.   It was an insanely foggy morning and we were in the mountains, so we were concerned about safety on the winding roads but we didn’t want to wait to long to get started considering our short ride the day before.  We huddled around the gas station coffee machine trying to convince ourselves to start riding when a large, empty, white truck rolled in driven by a young couple about our ages.  It took us a few minutes to discuss amongst ourselves whether it was a good idea and then a few more to get up the courage, but then Caroline bravely approached them to see if they happened to be heading in our direction.  As luck would have it, they were taking 101 north to Garberville, about 40 miles right on our route.   They said they’d be happy to take us as far as we wanted to go.  We did some quick calculations and realized that depending on the terrain, if we road all the way to Garberville, we might have enough time to get to Fortuna for a late lunch at Eel River Brewing Company and then get to Eureka that night so that we could still have Halloween off.

Taking the ride was probably one of the smartest decisions we’d made.  Not only did it give us a jump start for the day but the ride was a very windy and steep road without much of a shoulder.   In a perfect world we would have waited out the fog and done many short days of riding rather than try to make it out of the mountains in one day, but given our schedule the ride was perfect.  We arrived in Garberville at about 10am, still thick in the fog but only a few short miles away from the Avenue of the Giants, a 30 mile stretch of scenic redwood forest parallel to 101.  With less hills and less traffic we were able to meander our way through the fog and check out the scenery without risking our lives.  Thanks so much to Brianna and Keller!

After the Avenue (and a delicious second breakfast in Miranda, a town in the middle of the forest) we got back on 101 for a swift 20some miles to Fortuna.  We had lunch at Eel River and did a small sampling of their certified organic beers.  They didn’t have anyone around to give us a tour so we continued on the 26 miles to Eureka where our warm showers hosts, Dick and Kathy were waiting.  As soon as we were back on the road, the fog returned and it was a somewhat terrifying ride as the sunset.  It wasn’t the safest riding we’d done, but we had made it to the coast were ready for the big day following – Halloween!

Biking through NorCal fog

Biking through the Redwoods

Miles biked – 45

Approx total miles biked – 2998

Days until party in Seattle -14

10/29/2009  This was a  funny riding day.  It started out with the somewhat absurd goal of riding 106 miles to Humboldt State Park, about 80 miles out of Eureka.  If we could ride that far, we knew we’d make it to Eureka on the 30^th and be able to take Halloween off from riding.    We ate a quick camp breakfast and decided to stop for coffee and second breakfast at the next town.  However, just as we were turning on to 101 and starting our way north we ran into Tracy’s friend Ryan!  We hadn’t seen him since Denver, and in the time it took us to bike west, he’d driven up to Seattle and spent some time there before making his way back down.  He was on his way to San Francisco that day.  Its amazing how much faster you can get to things by car!

Right after saying goodbye to Ryan we found ourselves in our lowest gears going a little over 5 miles an hour and we quickly realized that there was no way that we were making it 106 miles.  When we finally arrived Willits, second breakfast ended up being pancakes for lunch.  Our legs were already feeling it from 15 miles of climbing but we still had high hopes of at least making it to Standish-Hickey State Park, only another 60 miles.  It wasn’t as far as Humboldt but at least we’d get to sleep under the Redwoods.

The next town up was Laytonville, where we arrived at about 3pm.  We’d done a total of 45miles.  Not sure exactly what our next plan of action was, we had a pint at the local pub to discuss.  This is never the way to get things done- but always seems like a good idea at the time:)  The closest campground was about 26 miles away, which, at the rate we were going, would just barely be doable by sundown.  If we grabbed some food at the grocery store, we could pedal on and try to make it.  Nut, we weren’t feeling. Instead, we had another pint, played some pinball, and checked in to the cheapest motel.   This was not the wisest decision for making it to Eureka the next day, as it left us with 120 miles to bike, but it was kind of like when you eat cereal for dinner in college: no one was telling us we couldn’t so we just did it.

There were two bonuses to this decision.  We were able to do laundry AND Tracy made contact with her friend Rose in Ukiah who was on her way to our motel with homemade chili and wine (from the winery she works for) for dinner.  I couldn’t say for sure why we just stopped in the middle of the day, but I had a feeling that the twig wanted to make that little reunion happen.

Lake Mendo to Laytonville - meeting up with Rhino

PInball vs. Riding

Miles Biked – 79

Approx total miles biked – 2953

Days until party in Seattle – 16

10/28/2009 Riding out of Williams was not nearly as much work as riding in.  The wind had died down a bit and it was beautiful and sunny.  We fought a bit of wind but it was flat for the first 10 miles or so until we started the climb into the coastal range.  And what a climb it was!  Our highest climb was about 1,800 feet but there was a lot of up and down getting there.  Each time we got to the top of one hill we thought, “was that it?  do we get to go down now?”  When the decent finally came though, it was awesome.  We rolled down into Lucerne for a sandwich break after a 10 mile or so ride along Clear Lake, envying every person with a house along the water.  We also saw our first out it the open medicinal marijuana store, The Cool Cove, which was kind of hilarious to ride by.  Just a little reminder that we were in Northern California.

We weren’t exactly sure at the start of the day where our end point was.  We had hoped to get to Ukiah, which was about 85 miles away where Tracy knew a friend from college was living.  However, we didn’t know until the day before that we were heading in that direction so we hadn’t been able to get a hold of her yet.  In Lucerne we decided that camping at Lake Mendocino was our best bet.  We had about 2 hours of daylight to go 26 miles, so as long as we didn’t hit anymore big climbs we could do it.

As with most of our riding days, we made it just in time.  We arrived at the lake, set up camp, made dinner and went to sleep.  It was another meal of couscous and chili and hot chocolate.  No complaints here.

Williams to Lake Mendocino

Miles biked – 59

Approx Total Miles Biked – 2874

Days until party in Seattle – 17

10/27/2009  Waking up in Chico, the twig was stuck in a whirlpool at the side of the river.  Our planned route was to head north to Redbluff and then across the costal range to Eureka on 36.  It was a very desolate, hilly and difficult route, even without the wind, that would take us about 3 days and put us in Eureka 2 days before Halloween.  However, our plan was to stay in Eureka on Halloween (meaning we had an extra day) and with the wind blowing at about 40 miles an hour from the north, we decided that our plan was not the way the twig was flowing.

Instead, we wandered around Chico: dressed up at a biker shop (in leather) and stopped by Karen’s dental office to stock up on toothpaste and floss. At about noon, we finally got on our bikes and went south.  It was a pretty awesome ride, with the wind at our backs for the first time.  We cruised at around 20 miles an hour for most of the day, putting in little effort.  We even had enough time to frolic in a pumpkin patch. Our new plan was to cross the mountains on route 20, a slightly less difficult crossing, and be able to hit a few more breweries.  We did about 45 miles south to Calusa, and almost stopped for the day.   However, it was only 3pm and we knew we should really get a little bit farther to stay on track so we finally did what we’d been avoiding all day and started riding into the wind.  10 miles of miserable riding later we arrived in Williams, the next town over, and started nesting for the night.  At the bar.  We had food, wifi and beer, so it seemed like the perfect place to hang out.  Caroline managed to find us a place to sleep for the night at a friendly couple’s house so we took our time and updated the blog and tried to figured out how we were going to get up the coast with our new plan.

Riding to Williams, CA

Miles Biked – zero

Miles walked – about 10

Approx total miles biked – 2815

Day until party in Seattle – 18

10/26/2009

It was great to have a day off after our long days through Nevada and then through the Sierra Nevadas (the hills, not the beer yet).  We spent the day on foot, all refusing to pedal for at least one day while we recovered from our 120 miler the day before.  After an amazing breakfast at Café Coda, with some of the best coffee we’ve had on the trip (thanks for the rec Larry!) we spread out to see the town.  The plan – meet up in a few hours for the 2:30pm tour at Sierra Nevada.  Well, Tracy and Caroline made it to the brewery and had a great time feeling especially knowledgeable after having already been on over 30 tours for the trip. Cheers to the tour guide – she did a great job as it was the first tour she had ever given! And cheers to Sierra Nevada who are operating at 99.5 percent sustainability. The taproom was not open though, because it was Monday so there was no tasting.  Anders and Sara didn’t make the tour unfortunately- a bit of bad directions from the google app.  Instead, they hit a few thrift stores, starting the search for our much talked about Halloween costumes.

Everyone met up afterwards back at Larry and Karen’s house.  They had generously offered to take us to dinner at the Western Pacific brew pub in Oroville that wasn’t QUITE on our route.  It was a fun time and we had the sampler of brews served by the most amusing server yet – an adorable and slightly smartallacky older woman who had been at the establishment, through different ownership, for 26 years.

After the brewery, it was off to the Graduate, THE beer bar in Chico, with about 30 beers on tap, including EVERYTHING from Sierra Nevada.  We drank beer, tried every machine they had to put quarters in and decided we’d be more than happy to stay in Chico longer if only we could.

Sierra Nevada

The Crew at the Graduate

Miles Biked – 120. Approx Total Miles Biked – 2815. Day until party in Seattle – 19.

10/25/2009

Waking up in Portola before daylight we were faced with two choices.  We either had to bike 120 miles to Chico, where Sierra Nevada and a place to stay, do laundry, and take the day off awaited OR we wouldn’t make it all the way and would have to stop somewhere in the middle of nowhere.  It was one of those days that you just had to be in it to win it.  We packed up our stuff quickly and headed out to the local diner for a hearty breakfast to get us through the day.   It was tasty eggs and pancakes but we had to eat quickly and hit the road.

Our first stop of the day was 30 miles in at Quincy, the town we’d hope to make it to the night before.   We found a cute little coffee shop and sat down to second breakfast – slightly dreading the next 90 miles.  We’d been told that most of our ride would be downhill through a canyon straight to Chico but the first 30 definitely we not all downhill.  It took us about 2 ½ hours and at that rate we’d never make it before dark.

The one thing that was on our side was that the scenery was beautiful.  After over a week in the desert, we were still totally enamored with the green trees and winding hills.  It was so different from riding through Nevada and being able to see 20 miles ahead.

Leaving Quincy, we finally reached the Feather River Canyon, the long down hill we’d been promised.  It was about 50 miles following the water, some times along cliffs, sometimes over bridges, sometimes through long tunnels with no lights.  It was an amazing ride.  We averaged around 18 miles an hour, but only because we had a warm headwind blowing on us the whole way, otherwise we could have gone even faster but even then it was awesome.  We dropped most of the 5,000 feet that we’d be hovering at since we’d arrived in Colorado and all in one day.

Heading out of the canyon we had a 5 mile climb that we crawled out of with relative ease, considering how many miles we had on the bike for the day.  We got to the top of the last pass and that flew down into the valley, dropping the last 2,000 or so feet at around 40 miles an hour.  An amazing decent.  The last 15 or so miles into Chico was some rolling hills and then some flat bike paths through orchards.  It was just getting to sunset and there was a vicious headwind battling us up the valley but we had down the almost impossible and made it to Chico before sunset so we felt victorious.  We rolled into our home for the night just before the it got dark, where our hosts for the night, a beer distributor we’d met at CanFest and his wife (Larry and Karen) had bought us pizza and left us a note to make ourselves at home because they were out for the evening.  It was perfect!  We ate, had a few beers (since Larry had an amazing selection through his connections, and sat down to watch Empire Records on DVD.  As always, no matter what the day is like, it always ends perfectly.

Biking over the Sierra Nevadas

Miles ridden – 52

Approx total miles biked – 2695

Day to end party – 20

10/24/2009 Sometime the night before, we decided that we would not concern ourselves with how far we’d get after we left Reno.  To be completely honest, we didn’t even want to leave Reno.  We were 16 miles away from the California border though, so with that in mind we prepared to leave.  We ate a large breakfast at the Sierra Grand and left our lovely hotel rooms.

While riding the elevator down, Sara noticed her front tire was flat.  At 11am, we all thought this was sort of a ridiculous way to start the day, but no worries, we’d just do what we had to do and then ride as far as we could for the day.  After a stop at the bike shop for some more tubes and patch kits (we weren’t taking any chances these days) we finally started out a little after noon.  We had 82 miles to Quincy, our original goal for the day, and 50 miles to Portola – our new more manageable goal.  With about 5 hours of daylight left of the day, we were ready to attack the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

After our stint in Nevada, we’d toughened up a bit so facing a days worth of climbing didn’t phase us, but we still hadn’t learned out lesson about Google walking directions.  We took the old highway 395 north out of Reno until we reached on of our favorite signs, “pavement ends.”  The option to turn around and get on 395 was there but after 5 days on Interstate 80, we figured a little off-roading might be nice. Two miles of steep ups and downs on a gravel road later, we rolled into a place appropriately called Bordertown and had lunch.  We all ordered chicken salad sandwiches – except Caroline, who in a strange turn of events order a deep fried meat and cheese conconction called a Monte Christo – and were a little surprised when 3 tuna sandwiches came out.  We didn’t want to make a big deal about it but we called the waitress over to point out the mistake all the same.  She grabbed a spoon, took a bite out of Tracy’s sandwich and confirmed it, the order was wrong.  We were pretty surprised at that move but she was pretty happy.  She gave the cook a hard time about the mishap and said that we had made her night.  Then she left the restaurant, her shift ending midmeal.  It was a very strange lunch, but considering it was our last meal in Nevada it was perfect?

The rest of the ride sort of flew by.  We climbed a small pass, road through a beautiful meadow and then started climbing again up to Portola.  It was about this time that the mountains turned from Sagebrush Brown to Evergreen Green.  It was amazing, like entering a new world.

Portola is a very cute town.  Rolling in, we saw cute cafes and a bar called Jimmy’s Roadhouse, which we decided was our best bet for figuring out where to stay for the night (we saw one motel, and we were told there was a campsite 8 miles up the hill but we were out of daylight and sick of paying for motels, so we set out to find a place to camp).  The bar was pretty great, some good local beer on special – Firestone – and some awesome nachos with fresh guacamole.  We chatted with some of the locals and met a man named Robert who leaved a few blocks away and offered us floor space and a shower.  Exactly what we needed!  Especially with the 115 mile day ahead of us…

Riding to Portola, CA