Today's ride officially ended the first half of my tour, finishing up the Oregon Coast, and crossing into California in redwood country. Tomorrow is a well earned "rest day," but before that, a brief summary of today's spectacular ride. Just when you think you e pretty much seen all Oregon's coastline has to offer, today I realized they were saving the best for the last 35 miles! It was one huge rocky headland after another, with sea caves and natural arches and all the rest... I'll let the pictures do the talking:
...and then, you knew where the state line was!
Welcome to California!
California's coast has just as much to offer on terms of scenery, as I learned riding from San Francisco to LA in the summer of 2018, and on a short trip to ride the Unknown Coast Century in the redwoods in 2019. For this trip, I'm revisiting some of that territory, and much more. Entering CA just north of Crescent City on US 101, I knew I had a 3 hour "window" to ride through a construction closure 15 miles south of the city. I made good time on the morning, so I stopped for a great lunch of carne asada quesadilla. Properly refueled I hit 1000' climb up into the first of California's state and national parks in the redwoods. About half way up, I started passing backed up cars & trucks! At least 5 miles from the construction area...
Which was fine with me! Up in the fog on a windy mountain road, and the safest car is a stopped car. I probably passed a couple thousand cars on the shoulder (i.e., bike lane!), And got to the front of the wait for the flag person to switch traffic flow (this occurred every 30 minutes). So I had about a 5 minute wait while the flag person explained how I should proceed well in front of the cars, where the tricky spots were on the descent ahead, etc.
When she sent me through, I took off like Vincenzo Nibali coming off the Poggio :-) The first couple of cars treated the construction section like it might have landmines buried in it, just creeping along, so I was long gone and clean down the mountain before any cars caught up with me :-) ...and I pulled into a vista point and took in my first California coast pics of the trip:
Which brings me to Klamath and my little Airbnb cabin...
Time for my rest day :-)
Today I got an early start thinking I had a short if challenging day, with a lot of climbing for only 50 or so miles. But... When I got to t...
So.. a short entry for today, as I'm pretty much just resting & reading. My one outing for the day was as walk up the road to a clas...
No comments:
Post a Comment