Portland to Eureka 2018

Today we crossed the border into California! By looking at the map, it looks like we didn't cross until the late afternoon. But I don't have any photos from before that so I can't really recall the first half of this day ?? Here we are at the sign.

We traded picture taking duties with a couple who were riding a motorcycle down from Canada. When we told them that we were from Hawaii, the first thing they asked us was about the hurricane. We had been so removed from media the whole week that this was actually the first time we were hearing about it!

The route was pretty bare. For lunch we weren't able to find a restaurant, we had to stop at a rest stop to make bagel sandwiches (bagelich).

Shortly after lunch we reached our first California campground in the Redwoods, Jedediah Smith Campground. The last five miles of this ride took forever. It may have been becuase I had slowed down while riding through the trees becuase they were so magnificent.

Finally, we arrived at the park entrance. We picked up a bundle of firewood at the guard station and rode to our assigned campsite located in the middle of giant trees! The campsites were equipped with a firepit and food lockers - they protected our food from more than just bears.

At one point we opened up a package of Milanos (you can see it on the stump in the pic above) and somehow a bird snagged the last cookie right from under our noses. We didn't even know until it was too late. From that point on, we put everything in the lockers and made sure to shut the doors.

The ride into the Jedediah was "short" so we had plenty daylight left after setting up camp. We decided to take a walk in the forest on the other side of the river.

Still can't believe how clear the water was. It was so quiet and still by the water.

After we crossed the bridge we entered the forest. This is what we had ridden all this way for! To walk next to giant trees!

We chose to hike along the Loop Trail. It felt nice to walk after rolling around on our bikes for so long.

Within an hour or two we were starving. We finished up the loop and headed back to camp for our second attempt at cooking our dinner.

See the results below!

Even after countless successful practice runs of biking, setting up camp and cooking dinner it was a relief to have the dinner turn out right. Especially after our first attempt where we managed to burn the pot to an unusable state AND undercook the rice. I guess at that camp, if we had to we could have rode 10 minutes to get food. This time, the nearest restaurant was an hour away uphill (basically out of the question).

Guess there's no greater motivator than not having a backup plan.

Take note of the dark liquid in the water bottle. Yeah, that's Coca Cola. At one of the gas stations we passed on the way in, we bought ourselves a little treat. And at our lowest mileage yet, we figured giving up some of our liquid capacity for anything other than bland, bland water wouldn't do much harm.

Once we had eaten our fill, it was off to the showers and then to bed. FYI, the CA state park showers are not free (like in OR) and they only take quarters. So make sure you have quarters if you're ever out camping in that area.

We learned this the hard way. Long story short, we didn't have enough quarters and ended up having to trade some firewood with our campsite neighbors to get some extra quarters. Which actually still wasn't quite enough so we had to split the quarters and then take super fast showers. But a shower is a shower is a shower (even if it's cold AND fast) and we were ready to go to bed.