California

The highway 101 follows quite close to the coast for most of Oregon. At some places it climbed high along the edge of cliff faces - at one point I pulled into a layby to look down on a group of over forty sea lions swimming in the cove below, and watched a couple of pelicans fly below.

Oregon and Hawaii are the only two states in the USA to guarantee public beach access on all the coast, and there are plenty of day-use parks and campsites along the coast, although the cheap hike-n-bike ones are still well spaced, but I was feeling fit and the weather was good, and I consistently made well over 90 miles a day through most of the States. I was just nearing the end of one day, getting close to a campsite, when a couple of locals recommended a place by the sea where they always camped. I arrived just before dark, my speedometer showing nearly a hundred and twenty miles.

The only problem was I was now past the equinox, and the days were getting shorter than the nights. So I tried to wake early and set out at dawn to make the most of the days, but I was still getting nearly ten hours of sleep a night, which wasn’t really a bad thing.

Stopping at Humbug Mountain camp-site near the south of Oregon, I camped with three other cyclist, one guy from Manchester, and two girls from Ireland and Scotland. The two girls were just getting towards the end of a round the world trip, having flown to various countries, ridden around a bit and flown to next one. I found out that they had actually been staying at quite of a few of the campsites I had, but then I realised they were going half the speed, and taking two days to one of mine. I thought I may be rushing the trip, but then, the landscape is the interesting part, US towns on the whole weren’t interesting places to hang around and spend an afternoon relaxing unless you had to.

So the next day I was out on the road again before my fellow campers were awake, and was soon counting down the distance to California, my final State. My distance calculations were slightly out, and I actually made the border sooner than I expected.

I took a photo of the state-line, and crossed over. Then, immediately the cycle lanes stopped, the road narrowed and a light fog blew in with the headwind. I followed one cycle route sign I saw, which proved to be a bad idea as I backtracked my way through a few small lanes back onto the highway. The problem was still the RV’s. Discussing with other cyclists, we came to the conclusion that these people only ever get out of their bus to buy food and connect the water and electrics up. So they had no real idea of how big the thing is.

Without cycle lanes, they didn’t get the idea they could move out around bikes, instead they just decide to ignore bikes completely and leave it up to the cyclist to jump into the nearest ditch. Whereas the massive logging trucks could drive fast, quickly moving out and passing, causing no problem to anyone - apart from the trees.
I tried to get hold of a detailed map, so maybe I could navigate a route off the freeway, but no where I stopped at had a map that showed more details than my road map to the whole west USA.
California wasn’t really the best place for cycling.

Late in the afternoon, I came into Crescent City, one of the largest towns I would pass through, apart from Vancouver and San Francisco. This town was surely the ugliest place I’ve seen. A dirty grey city, made up of a freeway surrounded by endless featureless shopping malls. The only interesting part was passing the docks, seeing, and hearing a large colony of sea lions.

I was soon out of the city, and heading into the redwoods, knowing there was a youth hostel twelve miles south in the Redwood National Park, I didn’t know about the eight miles of climbing up through the massive trees that I had to do before I dropped steeply down the cliff side road to the hostel, just as it was getting dark.

My map showed a few campsites along the coast not far away, so I took a late start and headed slowly down through the redwoods, exploring some of the paths into the forest.
Finally I got to the tourist information centre at Orick, and asking about bike camping, I was told there was no where near here I could go, and would be best riding south to the next youth hostel in Legget.

Wandering out of the centre and looking at my map, I found that Legget was over a hundred and thirty miles away, and saw sign by the road a hundred meters away, stating bike camping on the beach was allowed for just three dollars.
I chose to camp on the beach.