The weather it is a-changin'

September 13 - Sunday - Doug started off the day with a flat rear tire. He patched the tube and we ate breakfast. We got all loaded up only to notice that the tire was flat again. A young man cycling from Portland was in the room next door and Donna chatted with him awhile waiting for Doug to make some phone calls and fix the tire again.

We finally got on the road about 9:00, an hour later than we had planned and there was a slight headwind.....not a good sign.

The ocean view was pretty murky too.

That is Humbug Mountain with its head in the clouds.

This nice viewpoint is just where the road turns sharply inland to go around Humbug.

You just never know where you are going to find dinosaurs!

The slighest bit of blue starting to show up to the north.....Oh yeah.....we're headed south.

Looking back at Humbug and the very rugged coastline.

We stopped at the Ophir rest area for a break and found a whole Honda 2000 club setting up a photo of their prized possessions. One of their party was challenged to a dunk in the ocean. He did it but he sure didn't stay in very long. The cranberry oatmeal cookie was as delicious as promised.

The bridge over the famous Rogue River as we approach Gold Beach.

Mom and Leslie.....this picture is for you.

We reached town about 12:30 and stopped for lunch at the Barnacle Bistro....good food and good music.

And interesting art as well. We left an hour later with Cape Sebastian looming before us. This is the highest point on the whole Oregon Coast bike route, 4.5 miles of up with a steeper grade just before the top at 712 feet.

A hour later this encouraging shoulder message greeted us at the top. One thing that helped is that we were protected from the headwind until just before the top. Not the case on the way down the other side. The wind blew so hard that it actually slowed us down a few times as if we had hit the brakes.

Back down at sea level at Pistol River.

The ceiling is lowering again but maybe our luck will hold.

But of course there are pictures that need to be taken.

It started raining about halfway up the hill out of Pistol River (about 3:30). And it rained, then rained a little harder and it kept raining, along with the headwind, for the whole 2 hours it took us to get to Brookings. We only stopped to rest our legs, eat something and take this one picture. We stopped at the first motel that was very close to a restaurant. Turned out there were at least 8 other cyclists taking refuge in the same motel including the young man from Portland and the 3 guys that rescued Donna's handlebar bag.

Didn't have to do laundry....we just had to get them dry! The warm shower was extra wonderful.

56.4 miles for today for a total of 419 miles

California, here we come

September 14 - Monday - We woke to a cloudy morning. It was dry when we walked to breakfast but it started raining while we were eating. A couple of other cyclists were there too and we all agreed that yesterday was one tough day.........and they were a lot younger than us! Back at the room, we contemplated the rain and the headwind until 9:00. We decided to head to Crescent City so that we would only be a half day behind schedule after working so hard to get back on it.

This area is considered the Easter Lily Capital of the World. We just couldn't figure out why the sprinklers were on since we were getting pretty wet without them. About 10:15 we pulled into the Cur Del Farmer's Coop Store to pick up a syringe for oiling the derailleurs. It immediately started pouring so we just hung out for a bit. They had nice restrooms and free coffee so it made a nice rest stop.

The California Ag Inspection station. The agent just waved us through with good wishes for our journey. Maybe we just looked too wet.

Goodby Oregon

Hello California. We stopped for something hot about an hour later (11:30) at the T&K Deli. He had just finished making some vegetable beef soup which sounded perfect for warming us up. It was good and it was only $1.50 for a whole bowl full. What a deal! We left Hwy. 101 at this point and took Sarena Road, which took us to the village of Smith River.

Smith River.......another flat.....Donna's rear tire this time (glass). We had it fixed in 20 minutes....just too much practice. The good news was that it stopped raining about 5 minutes before and the sun even peeked out while we were stopped. A few miles later we even took off all our rain gear so it looked like our strategy was going to work.

We took the Lake Earl Road which is a very pleasant route and relatively flat though a terrific headwind made it feel like we were going uphill the whole time. About 5 miles from Crescent City, Doug's front wheel popped another spoke so we got to visit the very friendly folks at this bike shop, Back Country Bicycles. There was a diner just a couple of doors down so we filled our wait with a waffle ice cream cone.

Even though the sun was out, we decided to call it a day in Crescent City as we didn't feel like we had really recovered from yesterday. We found a room at the Penny Saver Inn at the early hour of 3:00 and took a nice warm shower. We explored the town the rest of the afternoon. This is the Battery Point Lighthouse and is only accessible on foot at low tide.

It was nice to ride our bikes around without the weight of the panniers. They (almost) felt like feathers.

A dolo, which weighs 40 tons. There are 768 of them protecting Crescent City harbor along with 3530 tetrapods....so says the brass plaque. They were placed at the outer breakwater and 20 of them have instrumentation that measures the stress produced by the force of the water. This is the only West Coast site with this capability.

Redwood National Park Visitor Center had a very informative interpretive display about the 1964 tsunami that hit this area very hard.

The tsunami was the result of the big Alaska earthquake. It took 4 hours to reach Crescent City. Four large waves battered the city over the next several hours, leaving 29 city blocks destroyed and 12 people dead, a very traumatic event for this small town.

We walked over to the Harborview Grotto for fish and chips. On the way back we ran into a group of cyclists from Denver that had flown into Redding, then cycled over to the coast on their way to San Francisco. Back at the motel, Doug cleaned the bikes with a handy hose by the swimming pool building and Donna finished the journal for the day. There wasn't a cloud in the sky as the sun set...hopefully a really good sign.

36.5 miles today for a total of 456 miles

Going Home

September 15 - Tuesday - Last night we read an email from Doug's niece that made it clear that real life had intervened and we needed to end our trip early and head home. It was especially hard to take when the day dawned crystal clear with only a light breeze and promised to stay that way for awhile. We called the local airport about a rental car. They could get one for us but it would be coming from Eureka and wouldn't be here until noon. This picture is the Battery Point lighthouse from a different vantage point.

This gave us a little more time to play tourist so we succumbed to the billboards we had seen about petting sharks and went to the Ocean World aquarium. Given that it was a Tuesday morning we had the place to ourselves. It is a guided tour and there were only 4 of us but the seals and sea lions didn't mind. They were too focused on the fish!

The end of the tour brought us to the promised shark petting pool. It was actually pretty cool and fascinating.

This is a shark's egg. It was quite rubbery and not at all fragile.

The shark was quite obliging and swam within reach everytime around the pool. You just had to let your hand slide along as she went by.

The tour guide/owner was more than happy to take our picture at the end. We headed back to the motel to load our bikes one last time. We intersected with several of our fellow bikers on our way to lunch (same diner as yesterday) and the airport as they were just arriving from Brookings. This made us just a little more sad to be postponing our adventure.

Accidently again, Donna's camera got switched to a black and white setting. However, it matched our bittersweet feelings at the time. It was a thoroughly beautiful day and location.

We had a little more time to use before the car would arrive so we rode out to the St. George Reef Lighthouse park. Somewhere about 5 miles behind Doug is the lighthouse sitting on a rock in the middle of the ocean. A really nice local let us borrow his binoculars so we could see it.

The lightkeeper's historic quarters were much easier to look at!

The airport is off to the left.

Here is one color picture just so you can see that it really was a sunny bluebird day.

Well the car wasn't here yet despite all our delaying tactics. In fact it didn't arrive until 3:00. We got a lot of reading done sitting in the sunshine out their back door.

When the car arrived it was a Toyota Camry. We sincerely doubted it was going to be big enough but the agent assured us that others had done it before. A bit of dismantling and some strategic placement later we actually did fit 2 bikes and all our gear in the car. There were only a couple of items under the passenger's feet!

This is what it looked like from our vantage point from the front seat. There was only one way in and one way it was all coming out. The leaving felt a bit easier once we could no longer see the ocean. We had a lovely drive through the Jedediah Smith redwoods and along the Smith River, evaluating it as a potential bike route along the way. We even saw a couple of fully-loaded bike tourists and only felt a little bit jealous knowing that we were doing what we needed to do. The redwoods and California coast will just have to wait but perhaps we will have more time for exploring then.

B= the Lighthouse. 13.1 miles for today and a total of 469 miles for the whole adventure.