Saturday May 23, 2015

Another great day on the bike I thought it was supposed to be downhill all the way to Myers Flat, it wasn’t.

We left the campsite at 8:30 after saying our farewells to Stephanie & David and Froujke and Paul.

We had commented to Stephanie and David that it always took us a couple of hours to get ready in the morning and we have still not managed to cut the time down.  David said it always took them a long time too and was glad that even seasoned pros, took time to get moving.

Ralf was laughing at Stephanie and David’s tent site, it was such a mess and he thought it would take them more than a couple of hours to get going.

The sun was out and we had blue skies for most of the day. We took our leggings of for the first time in a week or more and it felt great.

We stopped at the various road-side attractions, of which there are many.

The gravity defying confusion hill;

the Grandfather Tree;

the log house tree;

we decided not to stop at the chimney tree or the Big Foot café.

We stopped at one intersection to grab a snack and an old hippy fella, told us about this well. “It is pure water, I used to drink it all the time but I have been away for a few weeks in Mexico”. We had a look at this well, which was a plastic tube coming out of the hillside!

We stopped in Garberville for lunch. Once again, Ralf sent me in to do the shopping as the area seemed a little run-down and there were a lot of vagrants around.

The route today took us through the Avenue of the Giants. The road runs parallel to Hwy 101 and runs through groves of redwoods. When you come up to a particular grove it is so beautiful, the trees crown the roads and the light is incredible. The trees are massive the camera cannot do justice to them.

I personally wished that there were no cars on this road or that the 101 wasn’t as close. You could still hear the hwy, even though the trees deadened the noise somewhat.

We were going to stay in Myers Flat, but I had misread where the state park campsite was and we had to cycle another 8 kms to Weott. It was worth it. It is a beautiful site.

Gnomes live here. We went to the Visitors Centre and read all the information.

We were the only cyclists here for a couple of hours, we had sat down for dinner, when they all started to arrive. First two male cyclists arrived, they set up on the other biker/hiker site. Two more guys arrived and set up on the wrong site, they had to move to our site. Two girls showed up and were setting up when one more guy (Mark) showed up and started chatting to us. Another two guys showed up and finally Froujke and Paul. We have seven tents with a total of 9 people on this little site, three Americans, two Dutch, one German, one Brit, and two Canadians – four heading north and five heading south.

After dinner Ralf and I had a little wander around the campsite, it is very neat to see all the tent sites amidst the redwoods and some in the trunk of a redwood.

It is 8:24 pm and Ralf is snoring gently next to me. I will have to wake him up so that he can get ready for bed!