//location:
Harris Beach State Park
Brookings, Ore.
//time: 9:45 pm
//mi: 568
//from where I write:
Today was The Ultimate. Longest day I've ridden so far (62 mi), but definitely the most fun. (Also I'm seven miles from the California border yeeeeehaw.)
Last night I slept at Cape Blanco, which ended up being like 7 miles off 101 (merr -_-) but gorgeous anyway.
I was the only cyclist camping there. I heard Hugman Mtn State Park 11 mi down the road was a pretty popular bike spot so I'm guessing there were lots of folks bunched up down there. Or that's what that other cyclist Eric told me anyway. He was trying to get me to meet up with him down there but by the time evening was rolling in, I was afraid of a potential downpour and I really wasn't trying to go for another hour on the road. (I forget if I wrote about that Eric dude on here yet -- I'm a little backed up in my journal transcriptions. He's the dude who's doing Canada to Mexico on a fixie to "find himself," though I think that sounds more like a death wish.)
But anyway, we've been keeping tabs on each other and checking in for safety. Becca and I are also still in touch, but she's like 2 or 3 days behind me. I heard other cyclists talking about her and her 45 lb dog she's tugging around the other day and got really excited and butted in the conversation from across the camp all "hey that's my crazy friend!"
Anyway, right, so back to Cape Blanco. After eating half a loaf of cranberry walnut bread I picked up at a little bakery in Bandon (holy dang delicious) for my pre- breakfast (heh), I did the 7 mi warmup ride to 101 then continued onward to the next little town, Port Orford, where I spotted the snugly populated parking lot of Paradise Cafe. My brain did the immediate diner=eggs translation thing; I saw two other touring bikes, leaned by bike against a bench and headed in.
Someone to my right all the way down at the end of the bar by a pair of outlets waved to me. (Cyclists + travelers, by the way, have a sixth sense for electrical outlet location.)
I identified these dudes as the cyclists and walked over. The Where-To-Where-From conversation led into more general what's up in life kind of stuff.
The two guys are brothers: Mike + Raphael. 22 and 18 respectively. They started biking from upstate NY on May 21st and were going to San Francisco as well. Only later did I learn that they had made an ever so slight detour to the freakin Alaska border. (Here's their blog: faroutguys.com)
There was a third dude, but he bailed mid-Montana, pre-Rockies.
I wish my brother came on this adventure with me. But I guess Pretty Lights in Red Rock wins over 1,000 mi with big sis *shrug*.
I got toast, hashbrowns + 2 over easy eggs. (The west coast, by the way, really rocks on the over easy egg frontier because every single over easy egg I've had out here has been A+ Gold Star Check Plus.)
I chowed down, journaled and snuck envious peeks of my neighbor's Jumbo Fluffy Hot Cake that was 3x the size of his face. Mike + Raphael + I chatted for a little while afterwards, exchanged contact info and said goodbye; they were headed out as I was dressing my last piece of toast.
When I got outside they were still there so we decided we'd ride together for a little ways.
I was going to Cape Blanco about 40 mi south and they had their eyes set on the border. I figured Id just split off @ Gold beach or earlier if I was riding too slow. Ended up keeping pace pretty well though.
It was a gorgeous ride through the mountain passes. And it was fun riding with someone(s). Plus, I like em -- they're fun and I enjoyed their stories from their 5,000+ miles covered.
One can only bike by so many blackberry bushes before stopping, so eventually we did and feasted. I like filling my water bottle with em and having infused h2o for the day; or just shoving them all in my mouth is pretty great, too. No wrong way to do it.
--falling asleep, will finish in the a.m.--
We pedaled onward from the blackberries and into the clouds. They laid right on top of the road pretty much the whole day. It was neat biking through them: colder, misty spritz. Some stretches I could've convinced myself I was on another planet.
We saw a nice place to pull over for some beach exploration, tossed our bikes on some rocks and scrambled our way down to the shore.
Mike wanted to go swimming. Crazy. It was freezing. I ended up going accidental half-swimming.
Raphael+I went down to the eager to watch Mike plunge in. AND a cool thing: we saw a lil sea lion playing around on the waves, too! must've been like 7ft waves. He was having a ball flipping around in the foam. So cyoot \(^_^)/
I went closer to the ocean so that the waves would wash up to my calves. The first couple did, then the next came up to my butt and almost tripped me and dragged me in. Crazy powerful undertoe.
Mike came out after a brief encounter with some of the waves and we all just posted up on this giant driftwood log farther up.
The sand was incredible. Surprisingly warm, all pebbles, just some very small. Still more a pebble than a grain of sand though.
Even now as I'm writing this, I'm a little chilly and wish I were back at that beach with half my legs submerged in the heated pebbles. Have no clue how they were so warm though; it was overcast all day and all sand I'd played in so far on this trip was warm on the surface but got all damp and cold as you dug deeper.
I also found a heap of kelp. And kelp is something that always amazes me just because I forget how freakin big it is, and I like to imagine the massive kelp forests underwater, too. (Can't wait to get scuba certified.)
The kelp mass was washed ashore like an enormous beached mammal. I broke a tail of it off and it was heavy and leathery. I used it as a jump rope for a little bit, but man is that tricky business. Slippery sand, heavy, smelly kelp. Nah.
OH man and right so I was planning on stopping at a little campground just past Gold Beach that was indicated on my ACA map, but as we rode and rode, I saw no comforting, familiar brown and white tent icon that signaled any such campground. I've come to love the brown and white road Signac by the way. They usually mean good things like places to sleep, bathrooms or pretty views.
As the two miles that was supposed to lead me to the campground became four then six, and we kept climbing and climbing, I just accepted that I probably had passed it somehow and I'll just be ending my day in Brookings instead.
And that climb we did was one Id been dreading. The elevation profile was exceptionally intimidating but the ascent itself really wasn't the worst thing in the worst. Tough, for sure, but not impossible.
(side note: I am vowing to stop looking at elevation profiles here on out because it doesn't really matter anyway. You're going to to do climb whether you're anticipating it or not, and I'd rather it be a surprise than something I dread.)
Sailing 2-3 miles coming downhill at a 6% grde was unbelievable. Hit my max speed: 43 mph. I couldn't stop smiling the whole way down. Gorgeous views of the cloud-immersed shoreline. Smiling so big I actually started laughing, and then crying because of the wind.
I felt on top of the world.