Fortuna, CA to Redding, CA

Day 30 - June 29,2010
Mileage Today: 313
Total Trip Mileage: 8,440

The perfect days keep piling up, and today looks to be no exception. We are eager to get moving today because it looks like it will be a long one. The plan for today is to find the “Lost Coast Highway” and take it South down to the beginning of the “Avenue of the Giants” and ride the Avenue back North. After we finish riding through the “Avenue of the Giants”, we will head East towards a planned destination of Redding, CA.

So, the “Lost Coast” is an undeveloped stretch of coast a bit South of Eureka, CA. The terrain was too harsh, rugged, and costly for the state to build a large highway through, so the highway (Hwy 101) treks East for a bit to go around. This leaves a large area of wide open ranch land that butts right up to the Pacific Ocean, and is only accessable by a very narrow, poorly maintained road. It was the best thing ever!

See for yourself:






I don’t know if you remember those commercials on TV about the “Happy Cows” that make better cheese because they live in California, and it is absolutely perfect. This is where the “Happy Cows” live for sure.



A minor mishap -

Usually Nikki takes pictures with the point and shoot digital camera while I drive. Occasionally we will come to a spot that we may want to get off the bike and use the tripod, use the other camera, get a different angle, ect… I park the bike, we get the shots, then continue on. Done it a million times (or at least 82). But remember I mentioned that the “Lost Coast Highway” was really narrow, right? So, I was making sure I got all the way over, as close to the ditch as possible, when the bike fell over and shucked us both off into the ditch.



It actually fell over a few degrees past horizontal. It was hilarious! We were in the middle of nowhere (or so it seemed) with no one to witness our debacle, we could really laugh about it and document it with photos.

BTW Nikki is still buried in the ditch in this pic - have a closer look ->




We eventually got the bike turned right-side-up, finished laughing, and press on.

Continuing down the road we get our first glimpse of the coast line:



It was hard to believe you were actually in a place like this, or that a place like this still existed, in super developed California no less.







We soak it in for a while…



Turn our backs to the Ocean and begin to climb back into the mountains to intersect with the “Avenue of the Giants”.



Came across a couple on a couple of KTM motorbikes, one of which had a flat front tire. We stopped, lent some tools, and made sure they got it all changed without any problems.



(we figure we could use all the extra Karma points just incase)

Time for lunch.



Then to the “Avenue of the Giants”



The “Avenue of the Giants” is actually a 30 mile section of the old Hwy 101. It meanders through several groves of Redwoods and Giant Sequoias.

Simply amazing…



Just to give you some sort of scale.





The tallest Redwoods here tower to a height of over 350 feet.





By the time we got done with the Redwoods, it was already 4pm, and we still had a ways yet to go. We gassed up and hopped on Hwy 36 East. This road was 150 miles of hairpins, steep grades, and switchbacks. I am glad we were on a motorcycle, but it was still hard work, and by the time we arrived in Redding we were beat - or at least I was.

Landscape is starting to dry out.



This will be a theme for the next couple of days as we head into some high deserts.

Taking a break.



We are No Tell - Motel-ling it tonight. It is nice to have TV and a proper desk to type this blog on. Tomorrow we head into Nevada, and what I fear will be triple digit heat.


jordan