So when I was writing the post yesterday the plan had been to ride north from Crescent City, California, via US route 101. Break off onto US route 199 to head inland, then hook up with Interstate 5, finally ending up in Eugene, Oregon, for the night. Well, that didn’t quite happen.
Awaking, we ate the hotel sponsored breakfast and headed out to our first point of interest in Crescent City: the Marine Mammal Rehabilitation Center. There they nurse sick sea mammals back to health and return them to the ocean. We arrived there, with no help from the GPS due to the confusing directions it was telling me, around 9:00-ish. Unfortunately the gift shop area hadn’t opened up yet, but you could see the sea lions they had in the pens next to the building that they were nursing back to health. While we were checking them out, a lady told us that there were more on some rocks down by the beach. So after snapping a few pics we went off to the beach — a short walk across the street. No sea lions were to be found, but the beach was amazing. The beaches I’ve been to here in Oregon don’t have such a shallow slope so low tide only gets you maybe another 20 meters of sand. At Crescent City low tide gives you maybe 1-2 kilometers of more sand. Pretty cool to a former midwesterner.
We moved on and departed Crescent City knowing that we had a lot of miles to put on today and tomorrow to get back home by Saturday. We rode up US route 199 towards Grants Pass, Oregon. Another wonderfully twistie road that is absolutely gorgeous. I would ride that road every day if I could. We stopped in Grants Pass for lunch and headed on. Somewhere on the way to Eugene we started talking about simply going home instead of stopping over in Eugene for the night.
Our plan for avoiding Njord and his playfulness failed. While traveling on I-5 the wind picked up again buffeting us and every other traveler on the road. The interstate from Grants Pass up to Eugene reminded me a lot of Interstate 90 when we were driving our belongings out from Illinois as we passed through the mountains. Not as grand as when we passed across the Rockies, but still pretty cool.
By the time we reached Eugene our minds had been made up. We stopped for a rest with some Dutch Brothers coffee and hit the road again. Powering on through the wind we rode from Eugene to Tigard for our next break at California Pizza Kitchen for dinner. Getting back on the road after dinner we finally pulled into the house. Home sweet home. No freakin’ wind.
All totaled we were traveling for about 8 hours, covering a distance 340 miles. It was a long day on the bike, but it is good to be home again.