December 29, 2012
Orick to Eureka, California: The gloves come off
The palm motel in Orick kind of grows on you. It has lots of what in season must have been nice potted plants around, and the café really is quite good. Because the motel offers no way to heat water, we went to the café for breakfast, and were happy with it.
Beyond Orick the road returns to the seaside, to a beach that warns of "sneaker waves", which are sudden bigger than normal ones that can sweep a person out to sea. The sign says four people have died here since 2004.
The way basically sticks with the seaside all the way to McKinleyville, affording great views both from portions that are at water level and portions that are on cliffs above. The ACA maps suggest several diversions from 101, and since this day was sunny we decided to try a couple.
The first one just basically took us along a shoulderless windy small road, whose only advantage was that it was not the freeway. So when we got to the hamlet of Trindad along this, we were skeptical of the suggested Trinidad Scenic Drive. This one turned out to be worth it, though what we ended with was an often one lane road twisting along the cliff top. The views here however were great, and we could also observe California style houses buried among the big trees.
We returned to the freeway (101), having rejected the next ACA routing as too complicated. We cruised along the flat wide shoulder, and I was thinking "now we're getting somewhere". But soon Dodie got tired of the whizzing cars beside us, so we ducked onto the ACA way, which began with something called the Hammond Trail.
It was a refreshing change, because suddenly we were in a quiet agricultural area, with fields of cows. One such field distressed us, though, because the cows were severely undernourished. We thought about calling the SPCA, but really did not have the tools (like phone numbers and time) for that in our hands.
The fairly complicated routing was made easy, as it happens, by reasonable signage denoting the Pacific Coastal Route.
Meanwhile, not only was the sun out but we watched the thermometer climb, from a start at 4 degrees all the way to 12 and then 14! Once upon a time my mother had set down a rule that I had to wear my sweater when going on my bike, unless the temperature was over 15. So today though it almost made it to 15, the sweater stayed on.
What did come off, however, were the gloves. Suddenly, we went from fighting frostbite to dealing with sweaty fingers, and switched to our regular cycling gloves and out of our waterproof , fur lined gauntlets (or whatever). In a sense the gloves are off in another way - we are feeling like though there may still be storms to come, we are not going to be frozen and blasted off this route now.
That means if we don't let injury get us down, and if we don't let camper vans squash us, and if we can cope with San Francisco and L.A. traffic, and if we survive on Super 8 breakfasts, and so on, we'll make it!
The gloves coming off was a big boost, but we got another, even bigger one. Today for the first time we have seen other cyclists onn the roads, out for day rides. Two of these crossed the road and declared "We know who you are, you're the Grampies on the Go!".
This turned out to be Janet and Barry, two avid local cyclists and Warm Showers hosts. We had a great time hearing how they had followed our blogs, and learning about what cycling adventures they had had. Janet told of her attempt on the Nothern Tier, and it was fascinating to hear of places and situations that we knew so well. Finally, Janet pressed some Cliff energy chews into my hand, and they wished us a good journey. Best of all were their final words, something better than being handed a trophy or ribbon or almost anything else: " You guys are hard core!"
I showed Dodie the Cliff chews in my hand, and she quickly squirrelled them in a bag. "We'll save these for when we are really desperate." Thanks, Janet and Barry!
Back on the freeway, we now really blasted into Eureka. Eureka has an old town section that sounded interesting, and we got a glimpse of it as we rolled by, a block away. But we were too intent on finding a place to crash to turn into sightseerers just then.
Tomorrow, though, we are targeting a cheese factory. One can bypass a lot of stuff, but cheese factories, like bakeries, are pretty much must sees!
MORE STUFF WE SAW TODAY:
Today's ride: 76 km (47 miles)
Total: 1,214 km (754 miles)
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