55 miles
Last night we camped in the KOA by Arcata, and shared our sight with Madison, who we've been hanging out with for a couple days, and John, who we just met. We had the whole hiker-biker site to ourselves. Pretty swell.
In the morning we hung out for a bit and used the computer at the KOA since we haven't had one of those in quite a while. Then we headed over to the Lost Coast Brewery in Eureka for breakfast/lunch/beer. Our new friend John (who hauls ass on his bike given that he's carrying a computer and a mandolin...DAMN) bought us each a pint after we'd gone through the whole taster tray and we departed with way too much beer in our bellies for 1:30 pm. But it was great.
Almost immediately, I got the first flat of our trip. Frankly, I'm surprised we made it this long. It happened right on a stretch of 101 with nowhere to get off, which was not ideal, but we ducked off the road and got her patched up. And i discovered that my itty bitty emergency bike pump works a hell of a lot better than I thought it would, which is sweet.
Our route took us a ways off the highway today, into some beautiful but stinky farmland. There was a moment where we were riding down the road next to a farm, and all these cattle were walking together on the other side of a little fence right next to the road. As we would pass each cow, it would turn and look at us with a look of complete bewilderment on its face (at least that's what we took it as. It's hard to tell what a cow's thinking). Seriously every last cow looked at us that way. It was very funny, wish we could've got a video.
We also saw some beautiful country through the many short and steep hills that this side road took us on. I'm still a bit fuzzy on where it took us exactly, but that's not too surprising since my sense of direction is complete shit. But it was pretty, wherever we were.
This evening our route took us to the Avenue of Giants. We've been riding through redwoods for the last few days, but this is on another level. I have never felt so small. These things were just frickin' enormous. We visited the Founder's Tree (12 ft in diameter and 346 ft tall, no big deal) and took the short hike around the area. We saw the Dyerville Giant, or the Fallen Champion, which fell in '91. It was 1600 years old at the time, and over 360 ft tall and 17 ft in diameter. When it fell, a seismograph ten miles away felt the stir!
We're currently camping in the redwoods right now. Just roasted up some Polish sausages, drank a beer, and we're about to move on to s'mores. Cheers!
Special Sam moment of the Day:
This was a couple days ago, but I haven't blogged since then so shut up. It was when we took the road that was blocked off and were riding for an hour through a dark redwood forest with Madison. When we decided to go past the blockade to the road, Sam decided to try to go under it (it was probably 4.5 ft off the ground or so). At the last minute, he realized he wasn't going to make it, and jerked his head to try to avoid crashing. But in so doing he slammed his head right into the gate. We had a good laugh.
Ouch... ;)
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