Downhill? No wind? Well that is nice
/C2C4K CA.7.344
Benbow to Ferndale
I am going to preface this blog with a quick comments on photos. I've been uploading them to the blog in low resolution to hopefully make reading the blog on a mobile platform easier and to keep everyone from having to wait forever for them to load. I am however going to try and upload all if not most of my photos in a higher resolution under the photos tab on the right hand side of the website. If you want to see them in all their glory, they will be there eventually.
We said goodbye to Andrew in the morning, got camp packed up and headed out for the Avenue of the Giants. It was a great part of the ride, probably because it was mostly downhill. We stop to see Founder’s tree and eat lunch. I’m getting use to eating lunch wherever and whenever and multiple times. We have our staples at this point, bagels, some meat sometimes and lots of peanut butter. You want to talk about calories per dollars, down a $4 dollar jar of peanut butter and you’ve inhaled 2,400 calories, good for 3 hours of riding.
After the 32 mile ride through Avenue of the Giants, we got off the 101 and biked through Rio Del on our way to Ferndale. There we met a group of 4 guys who were riding their road bikes from Astoria to San Francisco at the local subway. Two of the four guys were cut up real bad, with their jersey’s totally ripped. They had recently crashed hard as they had been riding in a peleton and one rider hit another rider's back tire, crashing and taking his buddy out with him. We chatted with them for a while before heading out to Ferndale. After working up a couple of steep hills we made it into this sort of valley of farm land that we biked through for 6 miles until reaching Ferndale. It was a little bit of a rough road, but it was a gorgeous part of the ride.
We then reached Ferndale which is great little Victorian town. We ate dinner at the local restaurant called the Ivanhoe and blew our budget for the day. Luckily camping at the local fair grounds ended up being free. There were a few people bike touring who were camping at the fairgrounds, but the most interesting where a 16 year old girl and 17 year old boy who had taken off from high school a week early to do their trip from Seattle to San Francisco.
I continue to have a blast with Erik and Ryan and my right knee is feeling better.