Sept. 12 - Taking time to smell the roses

Van Damme State Park to Manchester

Sunday - September 12
It was really foggy when we got up. There was no hurry so we had breakfast with Gordon and chatted some more. After this, he will go back to being a virtual acquaintance as he is putting in longer daily miles than we plan to do (We don't want to get to SF too soon!). We followed his progress online later.

It was still so foggy when we got going that we had to stop at the bottom of the hills to wipe off our glasses.  Hopefully this won't last long.

Not much of a view. We stopped in Albion for breakfast #2, a monster breakfast burrito that we shared. The newspaper was headlined by the San Bruno natural gas pipeline explosion and fire, which we had not heard about. It was a jolting dose of reality in our very casual morning.

We hadn't planned on Harley's showing up in our little video but it sure gave Doug a thrill staying up with them on the curve.

Doug just proving that he knows how to stop and smell the roses occasionally.

This is Ron and Chris, local abalone divers that Doug met at the city park in Elk.

Ron had several large abalone plus lots of tall tales that he entertained us with for quite awhile.

We also visited the Greenwood Museum which mostly focused on the history of lumbering in the area. This mural  shows how they moved the lumber or logs to ships......no roads back then. The lumber mill no longer exists and tourism seems to be the current mainstay.

This art gallery was next door to the restaurant where we were headed.

This is Queenie's Roadhouse and Cafe. It was so busy that we had lunch seated at the bar. The food was very good and the fog lifted and it got warmer while we were eating. Hurray!

A few miles south of town we hit "The Hill". The ride down into Elk Creek was quite fun but it was excruciatingly steep to climb back out, especially through the swithcbacks (see map below). We actually had cut across the road, rest, cross the road, rest, go, rest, go, repeat. The guidebook says this is the steepest grade on the whole coast. It is certainly the steepest we've ever done. Walking might have been easier!

The top of the grade was a beautiful sight indeed.

We rewarded ourselves for "conquering The Hill" with a Kamper Kabin at the Manchester KOA. This place is as nice as all the rumors that we had heard as we've been traveling south. K-18 (our cabin) was a bike tourist's dream - very close to the showers, laundry, swimming pool, camp store and the outdoor kitchen with lots of places to hang the tent to dry and room for bike maintenance. It also was in the sun which was a good thing today. The hot tub felt sooooo luxurious on our "conquered The Hill" legs.

Our friends for the evening are Riley and Krista, who are from Vancouver, BC and Neal who is from Fresno (not in this picture). We shared the Kamper Kitchen, dinner and lots of bike stories. Riley is a Best Boy in the movie industry and Krista just graduated with a degree in Ecology. They are headed to San Francisco by bike too.

After dark, the camp employees invited all of us over to have ice cream cones at the big fire pit. They were having some kind of celebration. The fire was nice and the conversation was lively. We stayed around until 8:30 but had to get back to the cabin to do the Ski Patrol newsletter. The wifi worked long enough to download what we needed but not quite long enough to finish the newsletter and get it mailed out. It will have to wait until tomorrow. Our sound of the day was a bell ringing through the fog this morning. Nice to have a warm, dry space tonight.

Today's miles = 29.8
Total miles = 298.1