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.