Day 13 - Fire Complications (Brandon)

 

After booking a cool little cabin at Redcrest Resort, and a quiet night of blogging, we were excited to have a relatively easy 40 mile stretch of riding through the redwoods. We got a bit of a late start, but it was okay because there were few food options on the way, and 40 miles would go quickly with so many giant trees to keep us company. After eating a couple slices of leftover pizza for breakfast (yes, the same pizza from Eureka 😂) we were on the road around 9am. We decided to stop for coffee and pastries at one of the few operating businesses along this stretch of the Avenue of the Giants. It was called Rise and Grind, and it was operated by a young artist, but we didn’t get her name. The coffee was good, even though I’m not generally a coffee guy, if you add enough sugar it all tastes great! 

“Look up at the coffee sign Christi!”

While we were enjoying our brew, I received a phone call from an unknown number... I’m on vacation, so I let it go to voicemail... It was the booking company for the State Park we were scheduled to stay in that night. The park closures were being extended by another week due to the fires, and we no longer had a cabin at Richardson Grove State Park to stay at that night. 😳 I went into planning overdrive and discovered that a small town named Garberville was the last place on our route with any hotels or motels, until 100 miles down HWY 1 in California. It was actually less miles to this town than it was to our former campsite, so we headed that way, crossing our fingers for a vacancy in one of the 3 or 4 motels in town. We did make one additional stop to ride through one of the several “drive through” trees offered up in the redwood forest.

One of the “world famous” drive through trees

We hit the town of Garberville at about 2:30, and after striking out at Best Western, we found a room at the Humbolt Redwoods Inn. It was about $50 more than the cabin we had booked at the State Park, but it had real beds, and showers that weren’t coin operated. The hotel was a bit dumpy, and the TV was a piece of junk, but beggars can’t be choosers, so we made the best of it. Once we had settled in and washed the sweat off, we decided to take a hike down to the river, and grab some much needed food along the way. We found a little burrito shack with some tasty black bean and chicken burritos (pictured above). 

It was a 200ft hill down to the park along the river

After dipping our toes in the river, eating our burritos, and having a couple beers we made the hike back up to our hotel, stopping by the grocery store for the next day’s provisions. After posting our blogs it was time to watch some Harry Potter and go to sleep. We had a 50 mile day in the morning, that included the biggest hill, and most elevation in a single day we had done thus far, so we set an alarm for 6am, to get an early start.

Subtle product placement

-Cheers!