Category: California

Day 1 The night passed without incident, and we woke to a clear pre-dawn sky. It was wild to wake up with the tent fabric stretched tight as a drum, which indicates that it had actually dried out overnight rather than getting its normal soaking. Again, no one besides us used the picnic table for…

Last night, I was the last one up brushing my teeth by the picnic table, and suddenly they appeared: five or six raccoons, just on the other side of the table, heading for the food box. The stopped their approach when they saw me, their eyes beaming back the reflected light of my headlamp, and…

Rett, inspired by the sunset the night before, surprised me by suggesting that we set our alarm early enough to get up, make some coffee, and head down the cliff to watch the sunrise from the beach. In our previous life, Rett had a childlike stubborn resistance to going to sleep before the clock on…

An almost zero-mile day gave us plenty of time to stay in our motel until checkout. Rett used the time to make a series of phone calls, attempting to straighten out a Target order she’d had sent to a US Post Office via General Delivery, but had been shipped by non-USPS companies, leaving her stuff…

Walking the bikes back down the steep, rough track in the morning was certainly easier than the way up, but I still had to keep my wits about me to prevent my ~100 lb. vehicle from sliding out sideways on curvy ruts. We had nine more miles of empty, no-centerline, smooth-surface backroad riding to enjoy…