Day 16—Redding, CA to Red wood National Forest CA (just below Crescent City)

We wake up in the hotel. Nice, I’m warm and I can just crawl out of bed and take three steps and turn on the coffee machine. Normally, it takes about ten minutes to boil the water after setting up the stove. We have an easy morning as Lauren makes some calls for school and I play on the computer a bit. After that we head down to lumberjacks restaurant for our free hot breakfast, That AAA is really nice to have. Of course on all the restaurant TVs its tuned into wood chopping competitions. We ride out about 11am to hit the 299.

On our travels so far we have met a quite a few bikers and the majority of them know the road we are about to take. I thought the mountain pass was curvy! this was one big windy hairpin after windy hair pin. The road from the air probably looks like a scribble on the landscape. Anyway it was lots of fun. Safe fun;) and Lauren didn’t get motion sickness! Which I;ve heard happens, but not on this trip.

The rest of the ride was fairly normal, lots of road construction, riding through vallys following the river. As we get closer to the coast we both start to get more excited. We can sence it. I’ve been missing the ocean and we have ridin 7000km and its right around the corner. The landscape starts to change and the smell of air has the faint hint of salt. Finally we come around a corner and there it is, the OCEAN! Clam Beach is the next exit, we take it, pull into the parking lot, drop our gear and head to the water. “Do you think are stuff will get stolen?” I say, but neither one of us make a move to head back. Both of us drawn to the water. Through the sand in motorcycle boots is slow going and the tide is way out so it takes some time. But finally we make it and its worth it. The ocean, we made it!

We ride about 24 mile down the road to the Red Wood National Park and camp in the red woods. How beautiful.

~devin