Day 19

June 10, 2011

Day 19 I went from Eureka to Weott and stayed at Burlington Campground in Humboldt Redwoods State Park. Today's ride was actually mostly boring with a few views.

I had a late start because I did laundry at the KOA that morning, so I finally left at 10:00. I passed through Eureka and the route had me go on some gravel trail that was not an established city trail at all. It was just an unkept trail in horrible condition with unmarked side trails and multiple homeless people camping near it. I stopped and asked one of them if I was on the right trail and he said I was as his bull dog viciously barked at me. He told me to avoid the part that goes behind the mall because they would steal my money from me. Wow, that's sketchy. I avoided that section of the trail, spent 30 minutes being indecisive about what I wanted to buy for lunch at the grocery store, and finally left town around 11:00. Ugh. I hate late starts.

It was cloudy all day, so there weren't many good views. I passed through many small farm towns and stopped in Ferndale for lunch at the park. After spending 45 minutes for lunch I was getting really cold, so I left so that the riding would warm me up. Following some side roads, I encountered some side roads and was able to see some nice views.

I soon got to some more redwoods when I connected with the famous road "Avenue of the Giants." The redwoods there were nice, but I still wasn't a huge fan of being in the forest so much. So gloomy.

Crosscheck hiding from Bigfoot inside the redwood

After passing through the redwoods for a while I arrived at my campground at about 6pm, which is really late for me. I was the only one at the hiker/biker site, so I suppose I would have gotten bored if I had arrived a whole lot earlier. Anyways, it was a nice campground with lots of middle-aged redwoods and lots of old redwood stumps for climbing on. I had the worst dinner tonight that I've made in the whole trip. I bought the Velveta deluxe mac-n-cheese, thinking it would be better than the store brand. I also bought shrimp, thinking that it would be a nice change from the usual tuna that I put in my mac-n-cheese. 2 bad choices. The Velveta stuff wasn't better than the store brand and canned shrimp has horrible texture. Never again. It was a nice peaceful night with plenty of time to think...and practice my wood-carving skills. So glad those guys in my church taught me how to use a chisel.