Brookings to Crescent City, CA

Brookings, Oregon to Crescent City, California 10/31/09
Day 15 38 miles

Yep California! Before November, that was our goal! We rode through, at the lightest, mist, and at the heaviest, all out rain, all day long. We stayed warm by wearing our rain pants and jackets all day, but we have found that no matter what, we end up soaked. Between water coming in through the waterproof clothing, or just sweat being trapped in, it is impossible to not get totally wet on a very rainy day. I (Greg) sweat much much more than Dani. The humidity doesn't help. I think my midwestern instincts have never left me and my body tries to prevent me from overheating by sweating plenty. I am usually not an overly sweaty person but out here it is all different. The humidity has not gone below 80% yet and the long hours in the saddle leave me drenched. Anyway, back to today, I found a bike shop in Brookings, Or to put a new spoke in my rear wheel. Hopefully this works for awhile because I want to delay buying a new rear wheel if I can. They are expensive, between $100 and $200 for quality.

After leaving Brookings we were soon in California, but there was no sign that greeted us, probably because we were on a back road. The ride in California was very nice, not on main roads at all. The difference between Oregon and California was immediately apparent. Oregon is very touristy on the coast, but as soon as we were in California, the land and the atmosphere changed. The little shops were gone and dairy farms became normal. We did see some happy California cows. Everything was very agricultural and rural. Very nice. We rolled into Crescent city around 4:00 pm. We stopped at Pebble Beach and walked around at some of the nicest tide pools on the Pacific coast. We spotted a bunch of things I am not very familiar with, the marine world is a far cry from plains and forests. It is like visiting a totally new world that is completely foreign to me. We saw sea stars and crabs and many different kinds of sea weed, kelp, anenomes, and lots of other little things. Pretty cool.

We were soaked (again) and we were looking for a campground but it got late on us and we didn't want to camp at the city park on a Halloween night. We are staying at a hotel tonight in Crescent city. The hotel is called the Curly Redwood Lodge. The whole thing was built from a single redwood tree that was cut down south of here in the Klamath river drainage. It is a pretty cool place with reasonable rates. The room is huge, but the history is the best. This place was built in the 50's so it is a bit different than modern hotels. The rooms are huge and the layout is less space saving which makes it feel more unique. The tree this hotel came from was very unique in that the grain was not straight. This is very atypical of redwoods that usually have very straight consistent grain. This tree had obscured grain from growing on a slope or something like that and the stress created irregular grain leading to a curly appearance. It is dang cool. The tree was 18' in diameter and each bole length had to be quartered just to haul out of the woods. The one tree netted 57,000 board feet of lumber.
We are very excited for the coming days because it seems as though we might have almost a week without rain and even some sunshine. Yes!


Greg