Miranda to Leggett, CA

For Max’s birthday today we finished up the Avenue of the Giants continuing our somewhat inland adventure to Leggett. It also marks the midpoint of the trip in calendar terms.

In today’s episode of “Curious People While We Get Going”, the couple in the cabin next to us had quite a few questions for us. The gentleman gave me a little pink quartz heart for luck, which I passed on to Ruth.

We rolled on through the last few miles of the Avenue of the Giants. This stretch was somewhat less impressive than yesterday’s.

After a short stretch on 101, we got off to head through Redway and Garberville, to work on the bigger climbs of the day. In Redway we found an open post office for more stamps and followed a paint truck and crew restriping the median. For once we weren’t the ones holding up traffic. In Garberville there were a surprising number of hitchhikers milling about.

We considered stopping for lunch in Garberville, but the park we were looking for was downhill somewhere, and we didn’t want to climb back up. I also wanted to finish the climb we were midway through without letting our legs cool down.

Ruth was ready for lunch, but we enticed her with the promise of a downhill. She was eager, until she realized we still had more up to do back on 101. When we reached the top (and saw our favorite sign, the truck down grade warning), we got a nice view of the valley we had just climbed out of, with golden grasses on the flats and green trees covering the hills.

We dropped into Benbow and found a state park just off the highway for lunch. There was a strange crew of disaffected 20-somethings working, but I couldn’t tell you on what. They had a mishmash of vehicles in various states, one with “working” written across the windshield, and another with “dead”, plus an array of improvised wagons and carts. Many were milling about, but one appeared to be raking the dust. We ate further down the way.

Getting back on the road, our next byway was Benbow Drive, running roughly parallel to 101. It started off with a fairly long one-lane section that went up and around the river bed, with stop signs and instructions to wait until clear. While we were waiting for it the one vehicle to clear, a black pickup came roaring behind us, ran the stop, and revved its way up. We could see a conflict was imminent, since there was barely room for one car to get through, and nowhere for anyone to pull to let the other pass. The pickup figured it out, too, and started slowly backing out again. It got a bit dicey when they got to us, but everybody saw each other, so no safety issue.

We went through the section next, since the pickup seemed to be in timid mode. Naturally, it was uphill, gravel, and with some nasty ruts. The pickup followed, but pretty far back. Even when we got back to two lanes with no traffic, it stayed in timid mode and didn’t want to pass. We found a shoulder and it got on its way.

Benbow was hot, as the grass didn’t offer much shade. It did offer good views of the Eel River and surrounding hills as we rolled around 101.

The road ran out and we rejoined 101. It had just stopped being a four lane divided highway and switched back to two lanes, no shoulder, and signs warning trucks about tight curves and advising against long trailers. It quickly got to the shade of more redwoods, like the Avenue of the Giants, but with much more traffic. With no shoulder and steady oncoming traffic, we collected followers pretty quickly. We’d cut into turnouts when we could.

Then it was back to a byway, this time CA 271. We came across another touring cyclist taking pictures of a bridge, who asked about the way to Garberville. We stopped and showed our map and chatted. It turns out he was coming from Oakland, where his grown kid lives. He had wanted a touring bike, so bought one there previously, knowing that would force him to ride it back home to Corvallis, OR, sometime. Thus, his tour. He said he has been trying to talk his three grown offspring to tour with him, but they had been using their own kids (around Ruth and Max’s age) as an excuse. I told him to pass on that they should stop whining and do it. Anne also tried to pass off the CO2 canisters we were given the other day, but he’s a pump man, to. It was a nice little visit, strangers united by a common purpose.

We wrapped up our ride with some final climbing. 271 and 101 are mostly in sight of each other, but cut through the hills in different places. That meant there were places where we could look down pretty far at the highway below. We passed people setting up for Redwood Run, a motorcycle rally taking place this weekend. In fact, the rally forced us to move the rest day which had originally been scheduled for tomorrow. Our hotel called us about a month before we left – months after we had booked the room – to say they were retroactively applying a three night minimum for the weekend. While grumpy about them effectively refusing to honor the reservation, we decided we didn’t really want to be around during the rally, so moved the rest day back a day, which kept us out of the minimum stay window. At least that all happened before we hit the road.

As one more headscratcher from the hotel, the on site bar/restaurant isn’t serving food today because of a basketball game. The connection is not entirely clear. We ended up getting microwavable dinners from the small store in the hotel office and eating on the floor in the room. We also got to use the playground and pool before bedtime.

Today was Max’s second birthday. We weren’t able to get him any cake, at least not yet. We did sing for him, and let him have first choice for most things today, much to big sister Ruth’s dismay. He seemed to have a fun time. He’s really getting the routine of the trip down. He likes to help pack and unpack the bikes. He really wants to ride in Ruth’s trailer, but he’s still too small.

Ruth likes to tell Max about the things we’re doing, and asking if he can adapt for things that aren’t quite what he wants. “Adapting” is our go to word for all kinds of coping needed for this trip, from toys and activities, to clothing options and food. There are certainly challenges, and times when we need to sell them on something, but I’m really proud of how both kids are adapting on this trip.

Tomorrow will provide plenty of opportunities for everybody to adapt. Our average moving day has an estimated length of 7 hours. Tomorrow is the longest by far at 9.7, largely because it’ll have the most climbing as we get back to the coast. It’s going to be a hard day, but I’m confident we can get it done.