NorCal

I've been dealing with a lot of rain since my last post in Santa Cruz. Between the abundance of rain and the overcast skies, I've had to really fight the urge to hibernate and continue sleeping. I've also had trouble finding things to do with myself that don't involve mountain biking, since most of the trails are closed to bikes during the wet season.

Small Japanese garden in Hayward, behind a senior center

At least the driving has been good. I was planning on doing a short bike on Mt. Diablo for Christmas, but it started doing a heavy wintry mix while I was in the middle of taking photos.

Wearing my Christmas colors angered Mt. Diablo

Time to continue on with the trip. I have to admit, I didn't do much research about whats north of San Francisco. I only checked the average temperatures and made sure they were above freezing. So I was pleasantly surprised when I cut through the Napa Valley. The whole place reminded me of that default Windows XP background, only covered with grapes and cows. It was also much larger than I expected, going west to east through Napa and Sonoma took well over an hour.

From here, it was out to the coast to pickup Route 1:The Shoreline Highway. The road that's been made famous by every cliche advertisement about a car. This is a windy road that follows the coast as close as possible, regardless of whether there are rivers, mountains, or cliffs.

Where Rt. 1 crosses the Russian River

The few places Rt. 1 does pull away from the shoreline, things start to feel very Pacific Northwest, with small streams and lots of pine trees. Towards the end it got very twisty, making for some fun driving, before finally dumping onto an interstate.

From the interstate, some of the trees started to look different. Then, there were signs for The Avenue of the Giants, which cuts through Humboldt Redwoods State Park. It was getting dark, so I decided to pull over and sleep in the car, under a bunch of giant redwoods.

As cool as it sounds, it was a pretty crappy nights sleep. Since it wouldn't stop raining I brought the bike in the hatch. This means I couldn't recline the seat. Then, even when it did stop raining there was always water dripping down from the tree canopy, making noise on the roof of the car. But how often will I get to sleep under this?

Long exposure, tail lights, and moon

This also gave me plenty of time to think about all of the predatory animals that live in these woods that I don't have at home. Maybe its about time to pick up some bear bells.

Cats hate bells too, right?

When I woke up the next morning, I was determined to get a ride in. There's no way I'm passing up an opportunity to ride here. I found a loop online earlier that looks like it includes the only piece of singletrack in the park open to bikes. The climb up was brutal, and was made worse with all the water running down the trail. I've never seen so much water before. I can understand why people think there's Bigfoot out here. The size of the trees, the water dripping down, all the noise from the small streams, it always sounded like there was something in the woods. Nonetheless, the views were worth it. 

It also gave a good perspective to the size of the trees. They don't appear to be that much taller than some of the oaks on the east coast, but the trunks are enormous. 

How do you turn a mountain bike into a clown bike?

At times with all the large trees and ferns it felt almost pre-historic. I wasn't sure if I should be more afraid of a mountain lion or a t-rex. Not much of a trail, but definitely a cool place to ride. From here, it was a quick drive north to Eureka.

Now, I've had several people comment about Eureka. Just let me confirm: there is nothing in Eureka. However, this is where I make the final right turn onto Route 299 and start heading home. It was very tempting to keep heading north. Afterall, I could've been in Oregon in under 2 hours. But the signs warning about winter weather and the necessity of snow chains made it clear it was time to finally get out of the area and avoid the mess. And actually, just 20 miles east I crossed the first mountain ridge and the sun came out. I wonder if the people in Eureka know that they're not condemned to a life of overcast and rain if they'd just move the town over a bit. If nothing else they'd save a fortune on black coffee and fungicide. 

Continuing east, things started to look very alpine before finally drying out and looking more like California. 

6600 miles in, stopping in Redding for the night. I might've finally found a trail system that doesn't start with a 2000ft+ climb. Looking forward to stretching the legs out tomorrow with a good spin. At the trail head there was another one of those signs about mountain lions. Maybe I'll skip the tuna I was planning on having for breakfast.