Day 15 - The Day That Beat Us (Brandon)

 

We knew we had a lot of miles and a lot of elevation today, so we talked about getting on the road at first light. We missed that mark by about 45 minutes, mostly because I relied on my internal clock instead of an alarm. 🤷🏻‍♂️ Before we even left the camp we paused to take a picture, that would be the story of our first 30 miles today. It seemed like every time we turned a corner there was another gorgeous beach just begging to be photographed. As much as we wanted to take it slow and dip our toes in the water of some of these incredible beaches, we remained business like, and kept plodding along. 

We were feeling pretty good about the ride at this point in the day, with the highway winding along the cliffs of the Pacific, it seemed like every hill was rewarded with an incredible vista. We stopped frequently to snap pictures.

We made a stop at McDonalds for some breakfast in Fort Bragg. The town looked really neat, and had a brewpub, so I was a little sad that we didn’t have more time to explore more, but time was ticking, and we still had a lot of miles and hills to get to.

Sausage McGriddle, breakfast of champions

After our breakfast, it was back on the road, more vistas awaited! With so much pedaling to do we neglected to grab a couple beers for our 20 mile beer breaks. At about mile 35 we spotted a little market and stopped in to grab some Gatorade, Snickers, and beer. They had one of the best beer cooler sections I’ve seen outside of SE Portland, so many options! I went with the local Anderson Valley brewery, of which they had two full shelves of options.

One of my favorite brewers festival breweries, so many choices 😍

With beer in hand we started looking for a nice spot to sit back and take a proper beer break with some views. It didn’t take long before we found a little pull out with some trails to a beach overlook. It turned out to be a great choice, the view was incredible, and we had a nice little cliff side to sit on and see it.

38 miles in, beer break time!

After our break it was time to keep pedaling, it was starting to get really hot out, and we still had 40ish miles to go... and a lot of elevation. Cell reception was spotty all day, and we had seen very few food options since Fort Bragg. We went past a few more vista’s and then started riding through farm country, and more cows to keep us company. It was at this point that Christi asked where we were stopping for lunch. I still didn’t have cell reception, but the map was loaded and I didn’t see many options before our destination in Gualala. We decided that we would stop at the next open restaurant.

California stole all the haystack rocks!!!

With the sun beating down on us, the hills continuing to pile up, no food on the horizon, and more cows than ocean to look at, we were getting pretty tired. At mile 50 I got cell reception and decided to figure out when we would get to the next town. What I found was Point Arena, a small town about 10 miles further that appeared to have a couple restaurants and hotels. I also decided that we were running short of time and having fun was more important than hitting a certain number of miles, so I booked a room at one of the hotels. Neither of us were particularly excited about setting up camp in the dark with tired bodies, it just made sense. We had a short day the next morning, so adding an extra 15 miles to it wouldn’t be a problem. Having a hot shower and real bed are priceless at this point of the ride. 

The last nail in the coffin... this picture does not fully capture the grade of this hill, we walked our bikes up parts of it

Our spirits lifted with the knowledge that we would have some food and a shower soon, the last 10 miles were still hilly, and included plenty of cows, but it seemed more manageable with a better prize at the end.

So happy to see this sign!

-Cheers