I really have enjoyed most of California. Staying at the beach at Malibu park was really cool, in both senses of the word. We didn’t spot any stars, but did see a few dolphins swimming in the ocean. It never seems to get warm when you are close to the Ocean in California. Glacier Point in
Yosemite has been the most beautiful spot on the trip. From this vantage point you can see the entire Yosemite Valley, Half Dome, Nevada Falls, Yosemite Falls, and others I can’t remember the names of. I did get a good 4 hour hike one day while at Yosemite. I hiked to the top of Yosemite Falls and then continued to Yosemite Point for lunch and a cell phone call to my parents.The RV Park we stayed at just outside of Santa Cruz in the town of Felton was situated amongst tall California Redwoods. Felton and Santa Cruz have a very strong hippie feel to it. Our last morning in Felton I got a quick mountain bike ride in on the University of CA at Santa Cruz property. It was a real nice ride amongst the redwoods. When I got to the top I came to a sign that warned that this was Mountain Lion territory and to remain very aware. This freaked me out some and I thought of turning back, but a rider came along so I nonchalantly asked him if there were some good trails around, he said all over the place. I followed him for a while on the fire road, when he realized I was right on his rear wheel he picked up the pace. I wasn’t surprised, since most guys do this when they didn’t realize you were right there.
I got bored riding the fire road, so when I saw single track I cut off the fire road and headed out into the woods. I noticed a group of riders hanging out on the trail to the right of me as I took the split to the left. I kind of figured that the trail made a big loop and returned to the starting point. After riding for a while I came upon a group of riders riding in the opposite direction, so I figured this was the same group hanging out at the split and that this confirmed my intuition. Eventually I came to a point in the trail where I thought I was back at my starting point, but then I saw a car going by on a paved road that I didn’t notice was there when I started I got back on the trail and continued. However, I kept noticing that road to the left of me as I continued on the trail. Crap! This trail isn’t looping as I thought, so I decided to bail out and hit the road, figuring it would go back to Route 9 where I started the ride. My time was running out since I had to be back by 10:30 am to clean up and check out of the RV Park.
After riding the road for a while, I thought it best, to just retrace my path back to the beginning. All was going well, I kept noticing landmarks that I had passed on my way out. Boy were there a lot of turn offs on the trail! I kept questioning if I was going the right way, but then I would notice a landmark and would feel more confident. Then I cam to a point in the trail where I wasn’t sure where to go, luckily there were two riders stopped at a turn off point. I told them that I had gotten a little turned around up here and asked if they could tell me how to get back to Route 9. They told me I had several options, the coolest of which would be to head down the trail and take the second left, which would bring me down a wicked down hill directly to Route 9. That was excellent since I only had 40 minutes left to get back and I had been out for 1 hour and 20 minutes. They were right, the downhill was pretty wicked, actually it was a little too much for the new timid me, but I got down it without crashing or dismounting the bike. It turned out to be a huge short cut, because I got back at 10:05.
After Santa Cruz, we headed up to Candlestick RV Park, arriving at just after 1:00. It was cold and foggy, just like Malibu. I didn’t want to sit around all afternoon so I convinced Aimee to go for a drive into downtown San Francisco. She warned me as we were driving in that traffic might suck and we would have a hard time fining parking, since we had the bikes on top of the car and couldn’t use a parking garage. She was right! After driving around for 1.5 hours we decided to head back to the RV Park and find a place near the park for a bite and a drink. We got off the interstate near the park and started to drive through the neighborhood. It’s not the sort of neighborhood you want to drive around! I think we saw a gang hanging out near a liquor store completely covered in graffiti. We decided to high tail it back to the RV Park. Back at the RV park I asked the check in guy, was there any place good nearby to get gas and food. He said go down the street to Bay Shore Dr. and there are places with food and gas. I asked him if it was safe and he said during the day it’s fine. We decided that we would order Pizza Delivery and that I would go to the nearest place and get gas. While I got gas, I decided we made the right decision.
After dropping Aimee off at the Airport, I went back to the RV park, took down our site and drove north to Fortuna, CA to see the famous California Redwoods. This morning Barley and I got up and drove south to visit the Avenue of Giants, which is the old stretch of US 101 that goes right trough groves of immense redwoods.
On the way back I decided to take a detour that would bring me along the coast, back up to Fortuna. It was a really cool road! It wound its way up a very narrow road, barely two lanes wide, trough redwoods and up many switch backs up and down several hillsides. I kept expecting to see the ocean, when I noticed I was low on gas! I could head back or keep going, I decided to keep going. I really didn’t expect the detour to be as long as it was! I kept going up and down hillsides until I came to a Y in the road, an actual Y! I don’t know if I have ever seen a sign indicating a Y in the road. Luckily there was a sign that pointed me in the right direction, but it was 30 miles to the next town and I wasn’t even sure it would have gas. The road eventually came upon the ocean; it was a sight to behold! Waves crashing on rocks to the left and grassy hillsides with cattle grazing to the right and not a building in sight! This was terrific! But, I had the sinking feeling that I would come upon a road close sign and would have to turn back! This wasn’t an unreasonable fear since it had happened along the Avenue of Giants earlier.
The road eventually turned away from the coast and began to do it’s switchback thing up the hillsides and the road to much rougher. I couldn’t get the sinking feeling out of my mind that I would run out of gas and would get stuck out there! I figured I could take my bike off the roof and ride to the nearest town, but that would mean leaving Barley in the Car. I finally came to the town I was expecting and a sign that showed I only had 5 miles back to Fortuna! Yippee, I was saved! A little melodramatic, I know, but it was good to back!
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