Day 7- What Would Jeff do? (Christi)

 September 15th, 2020

    After having a starry night to gaze at, we were in for a real treat the next morning. We got up around 0630 to take some time to explore the beach at Humbug Mountain State Park. The beach was very quiet, besides one other person with his dog, and it made for some amazing pictures. Dipping our toes in the water lasted a few minutes before it was back to business; time to get back into the saddle. Today’s ride would bring us to Harris Beach State Park, which would be the last camp before we crossed the California border, and would be about 50 miles. 

    The first person we met today was Jeff from Grand Rapids, Michigan. He rode up on us as we were coming up to a view point of the ocean. Jeff was also on a bike tour, but was traveling much farther than us. This particular ride he was biking solo all the way to San Diego and then crossing over to Florida. His ultimate goal is to ride around the perimeter of the Unites States in multiple sessions. This day he had already ridden 60 miles and it was only 8am! Very inspiring, yet humble man! We had a great time meeting him and learning about his journey. He shared a link with us documenting his travels, which I’ll share along with the photo he let me take of him. Wishing him luck and safety on his adventures!

    Brandon decided Jeff is his spirit animal, so moving forward everything has become “what would Jeff do?”. Basically this man impressed us immensely 😂.

Jeff sporting his Surly Disc Trucker bike (Brandon has the same set-up)

Mycycle-trip.blogspot.com or @mycycle_trip on instagram

    After we said goodbye to Jeff, we came upon our second eventful moment of the day. We saved a bunny! Poor little Peter (yes we gave him a name) was running across the road; keep in mind we were basically on a bridge with high cement walls, too high for him to jump over, with cars speeding by in both directions. Brandon got some great video of me trying to chase the rabbit in one direction until he made it safely off the road. That little guy was elusive! He ran across the road and almost died at one point, of course Brandon caught this on film. Imagine me covering my face as a car wizzed by, Peter heading straight for the tires. Thank goodness he stopped running or else I would have been adding a rabbit to the road kill list. But he made it! Only took Brandon attempting to pick him up by the scruff and us chasing him a few feet for him to find his way off the bridge. Success!

    Our stop, after grabbing Mexican food at a burrito stand, was in Hunter’s Creek, where we found Hunter’s Creek Bar & Grill. They collaborate with the local brewery next door, so we got to try out some local brews and we met some awesome people. Two sets of couples, who were very chatty and friendly, were interested in our journey and told us they had just driven down to Crescent City, California and were heading home to Spokane, WA and somewhere in Idaho. They gave us a suggestion for a brewery in Crescent City, and unbeknownst to us, paid our entire tab when they left. The bartender definitely got a kick out of my expression when he said we were “good to go” as I tried to close out the tab.

    Wish we would have gotten the bartender’s name, cause he was also very helpful in telling us about some local sights we had to see. Along the next 20 miles of highway there were about a dozen pullouts for tourist to view attractions. The bartender suggested three must-see ones and they did not disappoint! He told us about the “not-so-secret beach”, that use to be a secret beach (it’s not labeled on the highway), but then someone put it on Google and Apple Maps as “Secret Beach”. It was a very cute, secluded beach. The hike down and back up was trying on the leg muscles! The second location we had time for was Natural Bridges. The sun was close to setting and rain clouds were rolling in, or else we would have hiked down there too to walk across the “bridges”. I’ll post some pictures below.

Not-so-secret beach

Would you walk across this?

    We also biked across the tallest bridge in Oregon, at a whopping 345 feet, known as Thomas Creek Bridge. Glad I’m not scared of heights!

View from the bridge 

    And we are in Brookings!! We rolled into camp at Harris Beach State Park really late due to all the sight-seeing and wonderful people we met this day, but it was totally worth

Ride stats: 50.44 miles and 2,858 feet elevation gain

Road kill: 3 raccoons, 1 possum, 1 snake, 1 skunk

Weird things in the shoulder: one sock, broken frisbee, sweater, two windshield wipers, life jacket, and a muffler