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’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!

Today was a brutality of a day. The sun was bright, the hills were plentiful, and the shoulder was narrow. However, for my work I was rewarded with a beautiful beautiful dinner location. That cover photo is the view from my seat in the restaurant. It’s gonna be a painful 5 miles back to camp, but I think it’s worth it.

River near the campground.

The day started with me sleeping in, then enjoying the morning. (This would later be a mistake, because it got so hot.) I stopped at a local bakery for a nice large breakfast (I ordered around 10 things) then hit the road.

First stop was the Crescent City Lighthouse, which is interesting because it’s only accessible during low tide.

Access path (ugh, I had to push my bike.)

On the way back from the lighthouse I got talking with a lady who told my there had been a tsunami in the area in the 60’s! Who knew? Apparently the museum is worth seeing. Sometimes I think this trip is just generating tons of more trip ideas.

The road out of crescent city was pretty terrible. There’s a 3 inch shoulder, and a large hill. It was not pleasant. Also, it was really hot. However, it was basically continuous redwoods until 3pm, which was great. The entire way there were groves dedicated to people.

The road was brutal. All asphalt and long hills. I was not digging it.

I did get to see the “Big Tree” though. Not sure what makes it big?

My campsite for the night is “Patrick Point State Park” with a campmate John. John is a retired veteran, who must be 65 or older. He’s biking back to his house in Texas. (Apparently he bought 5 acres their for $1500. Wow, that’s cheap.) I’ll talk to him more when I get back to camp, but for now I’m enjoying a beautiful sunset in Trinidad, CA at the seascape.

The food was alright, I had the “fresh catch” which was Halibut. But the view is amazing. I’d definitely come back. Hopefully a short day tomorrow! Goodnight!

Watched and talked with some surfers here. They recommended the dinner location.

Note the standup paddle board. Hippie. I’m jealous.

He rested... kinda. Today was another fun packed day. If I had to theme the day, it was learning from my elders. I think I learned more about US history today than any other day for the past few years. Did you know that the coastline of Oregon is designated a highway?

First and foremost, a HUGE shoutout to the Oregon State Park service! The hiker/biker camps are fantastic. I might of said this already, but it’s worth saying again. Lots of biking amenities. That it’s a bike stand with full tools in the cover photo of this post.

Today started slow. I got out of bed around 8:30, and cooked a slow breakfast. (For those wondering at home, on this trip I can do about 5 packets of instant oatmeal for breakfast. That’s about right calories wise.) Max rolled out of his tent a bit later, and I asked what his plan was. He said he was ready to get moving, so I gave him a bit of a teaser of what I had planned for the day and got moving. A bit later, he changed his mind and said he’d join me!

Our first stop of the day was the lighthouse at Cape Blanco. We were some of the only people there, so we got an extra long tour, which was great. I felt a bit bad for Max, because his English is not great, but he said he really enjoyed it too. Some fun facts about lighthouses, and this one in general. Being a lightkeeper was a bit of a sought after job back in the day. The coast guard would come and randomly inspect both the light house and the lightkeepers family quarters. If either failed inspection, you were fired. Lighthouses along the coast flash at different intervals, such that ships can know which lighthouse they’re looking at. For example, Cape Blanco flashes every 8 seconds where the lighthouse in Bandon flashes every 40. To this day, sailors still use that information. All the equipment for the lighthouse had to be made on sight, or brought up the coast at low tide! That includes a river crossing. The 800lbs. lenses of the lighthouse is turned by a 0.6 HP motor. This lighthouse was used by Japanese planes dropping bombs in the forest in WWII (trying to start a forest fire.)

After we spent a good amount of time at the lighthouse, it was time to go into town. Inspired by the lighthouse, I thought maybe we could try and walk along the beach into town. I asked a park volunteer about this and he said it shouldn’t be too difficult, it’s about 4 miles, just go at low tide. We were about to do that, bike I checked on my phone the direct distance: 7 miles. That’s too far, so we biked the 10 miles into town. So sad! It’s also possible to hike the Oregon Coast, and one of these days I’m gonna do that!

Our first stop in town was for lunch. We went to a really cool family run bakery and deli called Golden Harvest Herban Farm and Bakery. The food was good! And I picked up a vegan carrot cake for dessert. (Max has never had carrot cake before, so I had too.)

After lunch, we were off to the Port Orford Lifeboat station. This was a coast guard station where they’d launch rescue crews for shipwrecks. I think this was my favorite stop of the day. Did you know why “Jerry Cans” are called “Jerry Cans?” It’s because British/American gas cans in WWII would fall off a truck and break where German gas cans wouldn’t. The U.S. and Great Britain adopted the German design, and because the British called the German’s “Jerry” they were Jerry Cans.

For those that have seen the movie “The Deadliest Storm” (or something like that, the one about the Coast Guard on the east coast), there are scenes in the movie where the boat is totally submerged. Apparently that actually did happen! The boat is self righting in 14 seconds (although modern day coast guard boats right in 8 seconds). And... they had one of display. We didn’t get to go inside, but it was cool to see.

The reason we were even talking about Jerry Cans is the crew members had to haul two 5 gallon cans of gas down 542 steps to the boats whenever they went down (and you thought Lake Michigan was bad. That’s about 90 lbs (45 in each hand) down to the boat.

We walked down some of the steps, but not all. We still got to see this amazing view. I bet it’s not as nice when there’s a storm...

Our final stop in town was the grocery store, where we got food for our BBQ for the night! We bought enough in case Austen made it on his 95 mile day, but he stopped short, so sad! After a brutal bike back north into the wind (I’m glad I’m headed south) we took a shower, cracked a beer, and got a fire going.

It takes an embarrassingly long time to get a fire going in this wet climate. Today I spent more time prepping the fire, and only needed one match, but it’s constant minding of the fire to get it going. However, we soon enough had a roaring fire, and had brauts cooking. (And chili roasting!)

Dinner was very filling, and followed by the delicious vegan carrot cake. Unfortunately, the two of us couldn’t finish the entire cake, so I brought the remaining half over to a group of older campers that were out talking. They were more then glad to accept the cake, and we had a nice long chat about biking, places to visit, and the beach bill that made the Oregon Beach a highway. Apparently it’s only 90 words long! There names were Chris, Mike, and Tom. And they were all from around the area. Most come out at least twice a year to visit the coast. Sounds like it’s time to move to Oregon :)

From today I have two new trip ideas along the Oregon coast. Idea one, bike + surf. This requires me to get good at surfing, but I think it’d be awesome. There seems to be tons of good surfing here. The second is, as I mentioned, to hike the Oregon Coast. That would require a good amount of prep, and would be a slog through the sand, but I think would be a blast. Apparently you have to cross most rivers at low tide.

Finally, I as I said goodnight to Max, he gave me a really nice compliment. I think part of the reason he stayed was to practice his English with me, which I was more then happy to help with (it’s easier for me to understand him then him to understand me.). Anyway, very touching, and definitely nice to hear. Thank you Max! It was fun exploring Port Orford with you!