Day 8 - Hopping the Border (Brandon)

 

Today was the big day, it was time to cross the border! We had to make our way through Brookings first, and decided that we deserved a “healthy” breakfast before making our trek South, so we stopped at a little place called Blue Water Cafe, and had some amazing food.

Fueling up for the day

After breakfast we made our way south on a country road that dropped us off on 101 just North of the border. Once we made it to the crossing sign we had to stop for a picture. I tipped my bike over and rigged a spot to put my phone so we could take a timed picture. This proved to be more difficult than planned, and I have about a dozen failed attempts on my phone to prove it. 😂

Me trying to figure out how to start the camera timer on my Apple Watch, Christi trying to give me directions

Once we had our shot we continued south into Humbolt county, home of the Redwood Forests! It wasn’t until many hours later that we would see our first giant redwood, however. We spent most of the day riding on country roads with only cows to keep us company. I’ve been trying to teach Christi how to speak cow, she hasn’t quite mastered it yet, but we got lots of practice today.

After the cows it was into Crescent City to visit the brewery our friends back in Hunter’s Creek told us about. It was called Seaquake, and it had some tasty beers! We were hoping to get some blogging done at the brewery, but their internet was down, and I couldn’t find another bar or restaurant the rest of the way to get it done... that proved to be the case the rest of the route to Eureka, but we took copious notes, and are catching up now. After eating our fill, and buying a 6 pack of hazy IPA for the campsite, we got moving. There was a large, steep, hill between us and bedtime, luckily we were making good speed for the day and had time to swing by the Crescent City lighthouse for a picture, and stop to snap some shots of a herd of Elk we spotted.

This grizzled old buck had a bit of a limp, but was still pretty intimidating 

Once the excitement of the Elk wore off, it was time for some serious hill training. I don’t know what the grade on this hill actually was, but it was 1100ft, and we were in granny gear the entire time! There wasn’t much of a shoulder so we were forced to take the lane for large sections of the road, which pissed off a couple truckers, who decided to relay their frustrations with their air horns, not cool! There was a passing lane the entire time, so we weren’t holding any vehicles up, they just didn’t seem to think we had a right to use the road at all, despite many “share the road” signs. After multiple breaks to cool our burning legs we made it to the top and then immediately headed down a steep hill towards the campground. Unfortunately, we would be climbing this same 700ft back up to the highway in the morning, but that was a problem for future Brandon and Christi; present Brandon and Christi were excited to get to the campsite, and were ecstatic to discover, as we checked in, that the SHOWERS WERE OPEN! It had been 4 days of hard riding since our last showers in Florence, and we... were... stinky! 

Our evening abode, Mill Creek Campground, had cancelled all of its reservations several days before due to smoke caused by the fires, but decided to re-open on a first come, first served basis as the smoke cleared out. This equated to Christi and I having an entire loop of the campground to ourselves, and our own bathrooms and showers. We were also finally into the Redwood forest, and the trees were magnificent!

One of the “small” redwoods along the highway

After a little relaxing around the imaginary campfire, and some tasty hot chocolate, it was time to hop into the tent and get out of the misty rain coming down. Since there would be no WiFi available for a while, and subsequently no blogging, we also decided to burn some of the iPad battery watching The Peanut Butter Falcon, it’s a great movie. Time to sleep, in the morning it’s off into the heart of the Redwood forest.

Cheers!