September 17th, 2020
The climb out of camp was just as bad as we thought it was going to be. 9 AM was too early to be sweating like that, but we made it to the top! The highway was sketchy at this point, with limited shoulder and multiple semi-trucks passing by, it was unnerving. We were happy to see the shoulder widen as we got into Klamath. One thing I’ve quickly learned on this trip is that the passing lane sign usually means excitement when in a car, but when on a bike it means that you are about to start climbing up a hill. Oh how I loathe those signs and we will see more on this trip.
Our first stop this morning was at Trees of Mystery. Despite coronavirus, there were still people milling about at this attraction, and I can see why! For $20 you can do a walk through tour of the redwoods, many of them growing in odd directions. They also had a cool canopy in the trees you could walk on if you aren’t scared of heights. The sky tram was also a sweet treat, gliding us through the tops of the redwoods up to a few thousand feet from where we started.
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View from the ground
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Canopy walk in the trees
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Upside down tree- growing to reach sunlight
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Elephant tree
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Our next stretch of road was through a reservation that basically deserted. We were hoping to find a place where we could write up some blog posts, but this turned out to be futile with everything closed. We grabbed a quick bite to eat and then we were on the road again. Few miles down the road was our turn off to Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. Surprise another hill to climb! Near the top someone had written on the shoulder “it doesn’t get any easier” which had us worried, but amazingly it did get easier and we were in the heart of the redwoods, doesn’t get much better than that! This was the coolest 6 mile stretch of road we have ridden on so far. Luckily there weren’t a lot of cars on this road, so we were able to take the lane and our time viewing the trees. I noticed California loves to label sections of the forest with wooden memorial grove signs. There seemed to be a sign about every 20-30 yards.
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Halfway up the hill!
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These trees make you feel so small
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Literally called “Big Tree”
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After running through our normal camp set-up routine, we decided to walk around the campground to see if we could spot elk grazing in the prairie. No luck that evening, but we did discover fire wood! The camp host informed us that campfires were indeed allowed at this campground, and we were ecstatic! It may be the only campfire we have this whole trip, so we enjoyed it for a few hours.
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| YAY! |
Road stats: 20.65 miles and 1,385 feet elevation gain
Road kill: 3 frogs and 1 raccoon
Weird things in the shoulder: Yahtzee box, 5 CO2 canisters, CO2 canister grave site (too many to count), baby fireball bottle, snail, pill bottle, 3 half-burned road flares, and furnace air filter
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