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Bicycle Touring in Alaska, Canada, and the USA with DownTheRoad.org
Cindie’s Daily Journal: Northern California, San Francisco, San Jose, Santa Cruz, Big SurRather than write day to day info on the west coast I decided that I will add some tips that are not in the books or maps we are using. We are using Bicycling The Pacific Coast, A Route Guide, Canada to Mexico, it details the day to day ride from Canada to Mexico so I don't feel I need to give that information over again. We also picked up a map called Oregon Bicycle Touring Map and it has more information on shoulder width, terrain profiles, and lists all the hiker/biker campgrounds. Tips for the US West Coast Fall 2008 - The hiker/biker sites in Washington are $14/ tent, Oregon sites are $4 per person and California sites are $3 per person. I am pretty sure that Washington, Oregon, and California law that if you arrive at a state park by bicycle or on foot then they can not turn you away. It makes it really easy to tour the west coast where camp grounds can be fully booked. The bridge from Washington to Astoria, Oregon is long and has a very narrow shoulder littered with glass and wood bark. I was white knuckled most of the 2.5 miles across. I later learned that you can take a bus across the bridge for 50 cents. You need to be in a place that the bus can pull over and pick you up. Buses have room for 2 bikes up front and your gear will have to be removed. If I knew we could have done this I would have. Pick up a copy of the Oregon Coast Bike Route Map at the visitor center in Astoria, it is free and shows all the hiker/biker sites along the coast and in addition it shows the land profile too. What more could you ask for. We stayed in hiker/biker sites all the way down the coast and our favorites were the following: OREGON Fort Stevens near Astoria, the bathroom was close by and the sites were pleasant. When we arrived there, there were a total of 12 cyclists camping. Wow, bike touring has gotten popular. Cape Lookout near Tillamook has some nice quiet camping spots near the ocean. Newport has a great bike shop, so if you need some work done stop in and see Elliot at the Newport Bike Shop on 6th street, he also has an upstairs lounge to take a break where you can connect your laptop and do your laundry too. Stop in say hello and sign his guest book. South Beach State Park is located 2 miles from Newport, the hiker/biker is a bit noisy but it does have a hospitality house where they offer free coffee and tea, and a warm place to read a book, do a puzzle, connect to the internet, and watch a dvd movie. Jessie M Honeyman may be the prettiest hiker biker site although the bathroom seems to be far far away. The campsite is within Redwoods and surrounded by sand dunes. Just a pleasant setting. Harris State Beach near the Oregon/California state line also has a laundry at the state park. CALIFORNIA California does things it own way, it took a while to get use to the mileage marker signs, rather than show the mileage through the state, each county must be responsible for the signs so the miles count down through each county, how convenient. Northern California is the home of the giant redwoods and it is certainly a special place, especially when we realized that the groves of redwoods we rode through were preserved for future generations not by our park system but a group of people who pooled their money and bought large tracks of the redwoods in the 1920s, true visionaries. When you tour the redwoods you will see what inspired them. We took a rest day at Elk Prairie campground and did a day hike through the redwood forest, just magical. After Elk Prairie we stayed the night in Arcata, home of Humboldt State University. I stopped in the grocery store and was at awe at the bulk food, organic food that was reasonably priced and shear variety of food. I came away from the store with lots of granola. Tim still teases me about leaving Arcata with 2 pounds of granola. OK Arcata is a hippy town. The Avenue of the Giants located south of Arcata is a beautiful cruise through trees so tall your neck hurts looking at them. We left the coast at Jenner and headed up highway 116 towards Guerneville. We spent the night in Guerneville and the next day we rode to Napa Valley and stayed at Napa Booth State Park. A nice place, we toured Napa Valley during crushing season and it smelled great. Napa is an interesting mix of wine connoisseurs and the workers that work the fields. We felt like we were visiting a part of Latin America at the same time. Needless to say we found some great Mexican food to eat. YUM. We then rode over to Sonoma Valley via the Oakdale Grade and Trinity road. The Oakdale Grade may be the longest steep grade we have ridden in a very very long time. We arrived in Glen Allen to visit Melanie, Brian and their daughter Rosie. We met Melanie 6 years ago in Guatemala and have kept in touch ever since. We toured wineries they worked at and learned a lot about wine, I even got the hang of the difference between Zinfandel and Chardonnay. Cool. Little 5 month old Rosie was a bundle of sunshine too. We then rode back to the coast via 116 and Petaluma. California has lots of traffic and it was a bit congested on narrow roads. We camped at Samuel Taylor State Park in the Redwoods again and it felt like it got below freezing that night. Again, there were lots of touring cyclists. The next day we headed into San Francisco and rode across the Golden Gate Bridge. It was a difficult route to follow from the campground but it being Sunday plenty of cyclists pointed us in the right direction. We crossed the Golden Gate Bridge just in time to see the Blue Angels roar over the bridge. The Embarcadero was packed with people and it was a lot of fun to ride through Crissy field. We took the Bart (subway) out to Lafayette and stayed with Linda and Don. We are not sure when we met Linda on line but we know we have been writing each other since the beginning of our trip so it was a no brainer for me to stop in for a visit. We were really tired when we arrived at Linda and Don's and we stayed for 4 days, watched the debate, did a presentation about our trip to a group of friends, did an interview with Roger Wendell and just relaxed. Boy did we need it. It was a bit strange to be so comfortable with someone I had never met before but then I realized that wasn't true, emailing through the ups and downs of our trip really did develop a relationship so meeting Linda was easy and added another dimension to our friendship. We went back to San Francisco and stayed with a bike nut named LX who shared his house, his lifestyle, and his city. Tim kept confusing his name and called him XT, (LX and XT are shimano bike components) he didn't seem to mind. I have been to San Francisco many times and I thought it would just be impossible to ride a bicycle around the city. Well my perspective is changed, it is not as bad as my expectations led me to believe. Riding around with LX and Jon Winston of Bikescape, showed us the bike culture of San Fran and if you can ride a fixed gear track bike with no brakes through town well than I can ride my multigeared touring bike there too. It seems that San Francisco cyclists have a fascination with the fixy, one gear no brakes (ok a few had hand brakes) track bike. It is interesting that we saw this same fascination with fixys in Auckland, New Zealand as well. We left our host on Sunday and headed down to San Jose via Cal Train. Cal Train has a special car for bikes where we could bungy cord them in so they didn't move around. A nice alternative to riding in traffic. Along the way we met Rick who plans to embark on his world tour in a year. Well Rick you have good timing, it seems the Dollar is getting stronger against most currencies again. We watched a 40% decline of the dollar and it chased us home. While in San Jose getting an overhaul on our Phil Wood hubs at the Phil Wood factory, plan a couple of days to do this, it is taking longer than I thought it would. We are staying with an old college room mate of mine, we haven't seen each other in 18 years, whoa, that is a long time. Boy is it good to be back in the USA.
INDEX #6:
Alaska, Canada, and USA
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