We drove from Oregon to the Redwoods area of northern California and stopped in Crescent City. Joanna dropped me at the Starbucks with my bike and headed down to the forest for a hike. I got lunch and a couple of local beers at Good Harvest Cafe before braving the big hills of Route 101 South. Coming out of Crescent City there's a big climb that doesn't stop for a long time. I took at least one opportunity to stop and rest on the way. The road continued like this, but it was more balanced. Big, big climbs followed by beautiful, breezy, downhill coasting that seemed to last forever. All the while I had views of the gargantuan redwoods on either side of me.
Aside from the hills, traffic was my other concern. It seemed like people were accustomed to cyclists on this road, so it wasn't too bad. I still worry. The ride was amazingly grueling, yet exhilarating and rewarding. This amazing view was just one of many. I stood and watched this for a while. It was chilly and windy, especially near the open ocean sections, but pedaling hard warmed me up. I met Joanna in Klamath, a little town along 101, after riding a hard 21.5 miles. It was fantastic. I felt great.
We met next to an emu farm so we talked to this guy for a while. I think I named him Frank or something like it. He's from Australia. Once we left Frank, we went down to Redwoods State/National Park and walked the Revelation Trail. It's a really short trail near the parking lot with a lot of very old and amazingly huge redwoods and sequoias. It was dusk, but we could still see the immense size of some of the trees. It was a nice, relaxing little walk.
We got showers and pitched our tent in the biker/hiker area since the campground was full only to get told by a ranger when we were parking the car that we had to take it down since we are neither bikers nor hikers. I wanted to tell her about my recent long-ass bike ride, but I refrained. We had to drive pretty far up the road before we found a place to park and camp for the night.
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