Well, it started to rain again, and that was a bummer. But today was a day filled with great food, good company, and a nice fire to end the day. The food was the highlight of the day, as we meandered up the South Fork of the Eel, getting ready for a big climb tomorrow.

Our tents in the redwoood camp.

Austen and I left the redwoods and perused the end of the Avenue of the Giants (honestly, the section South of Myers Flat isn’t really that great.) We then hopped on the 101 and followed that South towards the small town of Legget. Legget is notable only in that it’s where we get off the 101 and start going along highway 1. It is also the start of a major climb that both Austen and I have been talking about since the first day we met.

The first food stop of the day was at a diner in Miranda. I got a large omlette plus smoothie, and split a second main dish (French Toast) with Austen. We had a discussion last night about what makes a good diner a good diner, and this one qualifies. Typical diner food, but prepared very well. It was delicious, and the locals gave us lots of advice about the weather.

After the breakfast stop, our next food stop was about 20 miles later in Garbersville. There we stopped at a deli, and got some absolutely fantastic sandwiches. Because we were still pretty full from breakfast, we got the sandwiches to go, and confused the nice lady behind the counter by insisting they be wrapped in foil, and not have toothpicks (they need to fit in our panniers after all.) The deli was picture perfect. The town itself was not as nice, lots of transients hanging out with not much to do (we’re seeing a lot more of that as we head south).

The rest of the day was full of rain, so wasn’t that enjoyable to bike through. But Austen has music going, and the lushes green scenery was still beautiful, so we powered through. We stopped right outside a town called Legget, where we setup in the hiker biker camp for the night, and went across the road to the Peg House for dinner. Their motto is, “Never don’t stop” which is where I got inspiration for this title. There was ran into a group of kids backpacking. I asked them where they were from, and it turns out they are 10th graders that just hiked the lost coast! How cool is that. This high school brings their kids backpacking every year. This year they had a small class (5 kids), so the 5 kids and 3 teachers did something new and hiked the lost coast.

Also at the Peg House we got beers for the campsite, and some firewood. Normally we strap the firewood to the back of our bikes, but this time it was so much wood it was difficult. We finally got it, so here’s a still sunburned mark laughing as I’m holding jelly beans, a beer, and have firewood barely lashed to my bike.

Austen and I hung out that night, and chatted late into the night about everything. Then off to bed, and getting a good nights sleep for tomorrow’s climb to the coast!

Back to the coast! We started at the very northern end of highway 1 today (again in the rain) and it was absolutely beautiful! Up and over the hill, down to the coast, out to Fort Bragg, setup camp, then went to North Coast Brewery for dinnner! I’m going to keep this post short, because I had to bike about a mile to post it, but it was a really great day.

We’d been hearing about “Legget Hill” for awhile. But, it turned out to be an absolute blast. The ride up had almost no traffic, and wondered beautifully along the side of a mountain. Drake and Kendrick were blasting from Austen’s speaker, and we were both in the grove climbing the hill. (The picture at the top of this post is from the climb.)

Much more fun than the climb was the downhill. For those that ride motorcycles, I’d recommend the beginning of route 1. Maybe the turns are a bit slow for a motorcycle, but they’re perfect for a bike. I flew down the hill, leaning into each turn, with a huge grin on my way. I forgot to get the picture, but Austen has a great shot of me smiling ear to ear at the bottom.

The route goes through some of the most beautiful and peaceful wooded area I’ve seen. I’m not sure what made it so beautiful, and couldn’t capture it in a photo, but even though it was raining, I thought it was a fantastic ride.

At the bottom of the hill, we were on the coast! Just like that we back! And biking toward the town of Fort Bragg. We stopped at a few little convenience stores along the way. I’ve been very impressed with the food at convenience stores here. I got an excellent sandwich made from this place.

Some shots along the 1!

We’re camping right outside Fort Bragg. There’s a nice rail trail that takes you into town from the campsite, which is pretty awesome. For dinner, we went to the north coast brewery. We split a salad, a pizza, nachos, and a few beers, all of which were very good. Being in the center of the bar, we ended talking to about 10 people. I met a couple that lived in Chico, and were just traveling along the coast for the weekend, then another couple from Berkeley that was also traveling for the weekend (and the guy was oddly similar to me. He might be reading this tonight :). Austen ended up meeting a guy that lives on in Berkeley for awhile, then a girl traveling from the UK, who bought a van and outfitted it to sleep in it, and is then traveling around the U.S. for 6 months. How cool is that?

After dinner, it was back to camp for an evening fire, where we talked deeply about tax exempt statuses of churches, news outlets, and AP comparative government. Great conversations, and a really nice night. We were laughing all the way back to the campground.

Tomorrow Austen heads inland, and I stay along the cost. Sad day :(. But I’m only 3 or 4 days from SF now. I’m actually a bit sad, I don’t want this trip to end!

That’s all for now! Hopefully tomorrow I’ll get a longer post in. Not sure how far I’ll go, we’ll see tomorrow. Goodnight all!

Today was a wickedly long ascent out of the lost coast, followed by a long cruise down a painfully maintained mountain road back into a serene road through the redwoods. Tonight I rejoined Austen in Humboldt Redwoods State Park, and we’ll bike the next day or two together.

The day started early, waking up at 7am and on the road by 8. I said goodbye to Brandy and her dogs, and started making my way to my 2600’ climb.

I saw this on my way out, thought it was pretty funny.

Looking back toward the campground.

On the way, I stopped at another campground to fill water and ran into Jason. Jason lives in San Jose, and is taking 3 weeks off from his job to decompress and travel (by car) around California. He also has two beautiful dogs, Chelsea and Cooper, and works for SSI. There he works on satellite communications! How cool is that? Their office is right next to Google, and he was explaining they were having a hard time keeping their buildings with Google buying everything up. Oops. That stinks.

I said my goodbyes to Jason and started towards Honeydew, another small town with a general store. Stopping to get a snickers bar, and chatting with locals who offered a ride to the top (that would be cheating though) I was ready to do my ride.

The hill up was not as bad as expected. It was long, and I was pouring in sweat, but it was never too steep. I think I psyched myself up for the climb, but it was over before I expected. So I treated myself to that snickers bar :).

The road down was treacherous. Most of the time I had to go pretty slow because of the potholes. At one point, I saw someone had written this on the road (sorry for language) and I couldn’t agree more. This road could use some work.

However, the route down the terrible road paid off, as I was deposited into Humboldt Redwoods State Park. It’s incredibly hard to explain the beauty of the redwoods here, but they are magnificent. The road weaves in and out of seemingly endless forest of redwoods. The road has a slight downhill grade, and the pavement is perfectly smooth, so your bike makes almost no sound coming down the road. With very little traffic, surrounded by these towering giants, even saying it was serene seems like a severe understatement. It was humbling for sure. I tried to take some pictures, but I don’t think they do it justice.

The road deposits you onto the Avenue of the Giants, and I think I timed this just perfect. If you ever come here (and you should) do the road by bicycle. It’s incredible. Probably some of the best riding of the trip for me. Just huge redwood after huge redwoood everywhere you look. And a complete on udder silence surrounds you. Really makes you think about how small you are in this huge world. And how magnificent, strong, and almost brave a tree can be.

I also stopped at a few places along the way to look at the sights. This should give you some perspective of the magnitude of these trees.

This tree is on the ground. It’s diameter is still taller then me.

Also, as I mentioned, Austen and I met back up! We talked tonight about why he’s doing this trip, and why I’m doing this trip (maybe I’ll go more into that in a later post.) We’ll bike tomorrow together, and likely the day after that. Then he goes inland to see his family, and I meet up with Mike to go back to SF.

No sunset or tent picture tonight, sorry! But I assure you I’m camped in a beautiful campground in the redwoods. We’re surrounded on most sides by other campers, all of which are visible to us because the branches of the redwoods don’t start for many feet in the air. Our beautiful fire is just coals, and pitch black under the canopy of the redwoods, even though there’s definitely a moon out. Looking forward to tomorrow, should be a great day! Goodnight all!

Today I felt like I traveled to multiple different worlds. The day started overcast, with a great conversation with Herb at the diner in Ferndale. I then climbed through what looked like neverland, before broaching through the clouds and into sunny green pastures. Then back down through the clouds into a very vibrant small town before settling for the night listening to the waves.

The mornings breakfast, at Joe’s in downtown Ferndale, was recommended by someone at the pizza place last night, and boy am I glad they did. The food was delicious, I left totally stuffed, and I got to meet Herb. Herb is a painter, and very talkative. I imagine, back in his younger days, he was probably quite the lady’s man. He used to live in SF, but moved to Ferndale about 20 years ago. We talked for awhile about modern life in SF, and why he moved. Ferndale, it turns out, is a really nice town. It has a supermarket, hardware store, 3 bars, and 5 restaurants. Everything is walkable. And that’s what Herb likes about it. Not as much going on as SF (okay, really nothing going on), but a great place to live. Seems like it too.

After breakfast I began my ascent into the lost coast. It was pretty brutal, but also incredibly beautiful. There were long sections of road so steep I had to remain standing in order to peddle the bike up the hill. But the forest, with the morning haze, seemed magical. It was hard to capture as a picture, but it was really nice.

After getting to the top, I broke out of the forest and entered beautiful pastures. The cows must not see many bicycles, because they seemed terrified of me, but not of cars going by. The descent down to the lost coast was terrifying for me, the road is in terrible condition, with large potholes everywhere. I took my time going down, as fun as it would be to go fast.

The lost coast section of the road was absolutely beautiful! The road was lined with flowers, to my right was beautiful coastline, and to my left was gorgeous green hills. It was very pleasant to bike along (even with a slight head wind.)

The last section before camp goes up into the town of Petrolia. Petrolia (named as such because it was one of the first places in California they installed oil wells) is a bustling small town. There’s a Post Office and general store. And the general store literally has everything, from a hardware section to ice cream. The store was also packed. Seems like a pretty functional small town.

On my way down to camp I heard a “you made it” from some workers on the side of the road. I got talking to them, and it turns out they work for the USGS. They have a monitoring station that measures water volume at a certain place in the Bear River. They were measuring volume themselves to verify the stations accuracy. I won’t bore you with the details, but it was pretty cool to hear how it all worked. They also had a cool little remote control trimaran to do the measurement, which was cool.

Camp tonight is at the head of the lost coast trail, a 3 day hike along the coast. The campsite is fairly nice. It was windy all day, and you can hear the waves :). I got here around 2, so made lots of progress in the “Just Mercy” book. The book is really hard to read, because it brings to light many injustices faced by people on death row today. It is very well written, and hard to put down.

Around 5, a women named Brandy and her two dogs setup camp next to me. Brandy is 42 and recently retired from the navy. She just did a 3 day out and back on the lost coast. Apparently the weather on the coast was pretty bad, and travel was slow, so she’s going inland and hiking in the redwoods. Her two dogs are beautiful beautiful golden retrievers. We talked about her gear (she has opted to use a quilt to sleep with, I can’t remember which one, but she loves it), and has a really nice pillow. I’m sleeping on my puffy, but think I’ll invest in a pillow when I get back. She also has 3 kids, all of whom are different. And figuring out what to do with her life now that she’s retired.

Tomorrow should be a super tough day. Unfortunately, the dinner I made was not enough, so I’m going to bed a bit hungry. I’ll have to compensate with cliff bars tomorrow. #5000 calories a day. Goodnight!

Today’s story starts last night, with the story of John Keeffe, then meanders along the coast, before heading inland to the quaint town of Ferndale, a fairground, and an incredibly expensive laundromat.

After my gorgeous dinner last night, I headed back to camp to talk with John, and boy does he have quite the story. John was a adopted growing up, and ended up in a foster home. After turning 18 he went to the military and joined the 82nd airborne. (According to John, humans are maximally afraid of heights at 35 feet, so that’s how high all the jump towers are at jump school.) Apparently he did pretty well, because the army sent him to West Point to become an officer. After West Point he ended up becoming a journalist for some army newspaper and served his years in the army writing news articles. He was pretty stoked about the job.

After the army, John moved to San Francisco where he got paid $50 to repel from Skyscrapers to do miscellaneous work (that jump school paid off in the end after all!) After that, John retired at 65. After retirement John started thinking about his family. He had met his real brother when he was in his 20’s and decided to reach out. His brother invited John to his home in the middle of the desert in Texas, in a small town called Terlingua.

It’s important to know that Terlingua is totally off the grid. No water, no electricity, no gas. And dust storms are a major problem. According to John, no matter what you do, things get dusty. The nearest grocery store (or any store that’s not just a quick convenience store) is 80 miles away. And once a year they host the world championship (or so John said) in chili. But that’s where his brother lives, so he went to go meet him.

Upon arriving, and John swears this is true, his brother told him he had just the previous day read a fortune from a fortune cookie that said “You will soon be reacquainted with a long lost relative and it will bring you great fortune.” And that it did! John dug his brother a sceptic field, painted his entire house, and buried the batteries to keep them out of the sun! Now that’s good fortune if you ask me.

After visiting his brother, John decided to build his own house nearby, so he bought five acres of land, and built his house, where he now lives with his dog Maggie. Also, at the suggestion of his brother, he recently went to the VA after not going for years. The VA looked at him, and sent him to Medford, OR for surgery. John had a total knee replacement, got fake teeth, and had some eye surgery done. He was super impressed with their service, and says he feels so much better now after getting treatment. At the VA, someone was trying to get rid of a bike. John bought it off him for $100, and decided to bike back to his home in Texas. (Pretty ambitious for a guy just off knee surgery if you ask me.)

John is now retired, living paycheck to paycheck (he had to stay in his campsite one more day for his next paycheck to hit). He has until September to make it back to his house, so he’s taking his time, doing 20ish miles a day. And he’s taken up photography as his hobby. (He’s actually quite good. He posts some pictures on Facebook. You can look him up as “John Keeffe.”) It was nice talking with him for the night! I’m glad I got to hear all about his life.

(Morning at camp)

I left John at about 7:30am, and rolled into Trinidad to get some breakfast. At this point of the trip I feel like a hobbit, stopping all the time to eat more food. The cafe is Trinidad was nice, and they don’t allow people to take “to go” cups. Doing their part for the environment. Unfortunately, and I’m sure to the owners dismay, some local ... people with nothing to do ... where hanging out in the cafe. One trying to get a free coffee refill, the other coloring the firsts drumsticks. They were harmless, and nice, but boisterous and loud. I’m sure the owner wanted them out, but not much she could do.

After hot chocolate (drinking coffee would be super convenient) and a breakfast burrito I hit the road, and saw a beautiful morning. I stopped multiple times to watch people surf and enjoy the ocean.

After the beach came a long bike path! The first of the trip. Also, Karl rolled in (fog) and there were some absolutely gorgeous houses.

After stopping again for another breakfast, and getting some camping food for my trip into the Lost Coast, the scenery changed. The second half of my day reminded me of Switzerland, and biking through the cows!

I made it to Ferndale with one wrong turn, and one annoying road closure. (I hate biking on the 101 in California. Biking on a freeway is demoralizing and not at all scenic. It’s also hard to stop quickly for food. I avoid it as much as possible.) The county fairgrounds here are also a campsite, and for $12 I got a tent site. I also used the local laundromat mat (which costs $6 a load to was!!! That’s incredibly expensive), and so as I’m writing this I’m wearing all clean clothing. Happy Mark.

Tonight’s menu for dinner is pizza. I nearly ate a full medium pizza, but got stuffed by the last slice (get it?). I finally started reading the book, Just Mercy. So far it’s very good. It’s terrifying the amount of prejudice the author runs into in the modern day. That being sad, I’ve noticed that even on this trip I’ve definitely made some decisions based on preconceived notions. Like I thought John last night wasn’t trustworthy at first (after about 10 seconds of talking with him I realized I was wrong. I think I originally saw Home as one of the homeless of SF. Which draws even more questions about my snap decisions. But I digress)

After I finished pizza, I ended up chatting with a lady that is going to bike for AIDS prevention from SF to LA. After talking for awhile, she invited me to stay with her and her boyfriend in town. I would’ve taken her up on the offer, but my tent was setup, and I was ready for bed! Apparently I remind her a lot of her son, Errol Funk, who currently lives in Seattle working for the coast guard. Good luck to her on her ride!

Tomorrow is a long day. Lots of hills. I’m headed to Lost Coast Mattole Campground for the night, then off to Humboldt State Park the night after that. I’m almost certainly not going to have service tomorrow night, so no post tomorrow night, sorry! I’ll try to post something from the state park!

View from the tent. There are crickets in the background, and cows mooing. And one large mosquito buzzing around the fly.

Goodnight!