Circling the U.S. Chapter 49: Fire!

We knew when we began this trip that we had no way of avoiding riding through wildfire country. So far, through Montana, Washington, Oregon, and California, we'd been lucky. The wildfire season had been relatively quiet.  

Avenue of the Giants

Thursday, October 24 - Saturday, October 26, 2019

With shorter days we are waking up and cooking breakfast in the dark if we want enough time to get in longer miles without rushing. The plan for Thursday was 50 miles so we tried for an early start, which still gave us time for a second breakfast in Miranda after riding 12 miles.

We thought we'd continue on to the next town before stopping but when we saw a couple of cyclists parking their bikes here at the Avenue Cafe we thought maybe we should check it out. It turned out that the cyclists were an older couple on the return trip of their annual two-day ride to the Benbow Inn, further down the road. They told us this was the place for breakfast. Rob and I shared a veggie and cheese omelette, crispy fries and toast. It was perfect.

As we were leaving the other cyclists told us that a wildfire had started in Geyserville, further inland. We weren't going that way so we didn't give it much thought.

After leaving the Avenue of the Giants we meandered on and off Route 101. We stopped in Benbow, population 321, with nothing much except a lovely inn where we stopped for tea and internet, sitting outside on their lovely patio. It was a pleasant way to spend an hour on a beautiful autumn day.

I'm putting the Benbow Inn on my list of places to stay on our next bicycle ride down the Pacific coast.

We were in the land of tacky tourist traps. What we really wanted was some ice cream but, alas, they didn't sell any.

Fifty miles brought us to Standish Hickey State Recreation Area Campground where we shared the hiker/biker site with a young cyclist, Toby from England, and a homeless person. I never actually saw the homeless person but there was a tent with mountains of food in the foyer and I could make out a person inside. Takeout containers littered the picnic table nearby. I thought, I hope we aren't woken up in the middle of the night by animals foraging through all that food.

Will had told us he was planning to camp here, but he never showed up, not even after dark. 

This scene greeted us first thing Friday morning, October 25.

Riding through the redwoods we often enjoyed scenes like this one, with the sun sending spears of light shining through the trees. Rob had been bugging me to get a picture of it but I wasn't sure I could capture the magic. Perhaps I got just a hint of it.

I spent the early morning hours lying in our tent worrying for nothing. It wasn't the thousand foot climb that had me worried, It was the semis I heard passing by the campground throughout the night. I knew we'd be sharing the road with them on that climb, a road that would be narrow and winding, with no shoulders. We'd be dead.

Worries are best shared. At breakfast I said to Rob, "I can't believe all that traffic this early in the morning." 

Rob said, "Don't worry. We'll be fine."

We were on the road, U.S. 101, shortly after 8:00 and the traffic wasn’t too bad and there was still a shoulder. Then I remembered. We would be getting off 101 shortly, onto California State Highway 1, running along the coast. 

We turned onto Rte. 1, and none of the traffic followed. For the next four miles Rob and I climbed 1000 feet on a narrow, winding road with no shoulder and no traffic to worry us. Maybe four cars passed me on the entire journey to the top. My only worry sas two dogs that turned out to be as worrisome as the traffic.

When I saw two large black dogs standing quietly by the side of the road I stopped, worried they would chase me. I waited and watched. They stood still and watched. I waited for Rob. We walked our bikes past them. They didn’t follow. 

After our thousand-foot climb we had a long winding glorious downhill stretch that never ended. It went on for seven miles. At one point I had to pull over to the side of the road and stop to get the tingling out of my hands that came from working the brakes so much.

Then another climb of 500 feet and the downhill brought us to the coast where we stopped to savor the view, eat lunch, and soak up some sun. Rob noticed a couple seals swimming below us.

There's something swimming down there. Can you see it?

Today is the anniversary of our first run together, which was really our first date. It seemed appropriate that we would spend the day sharing an exhilarating physical challenge. Rob wanted to also go out for dinner but I reminded him we were going to celebrate later that weekend.

We needed to find a place with internet  to take care of some business. Rob had a tooth that was worrying him. We wanted to find a place to stay in Mendocino for the following night, Saturday, to celebrate our anniversary. A little country store just down the road from our lunch spot had wifi, so we sat outside on the porch and got to work. There was a cannibas event in Mendocino over the weekend so we found only one room for $175. I said, "Let's go to Mendocino tomorrow. We can explore and book a room for Sunday night and stay at the state park campground that's two miles away."

On the road again with another ten miles or so to go, we rode along the coast with sweeping views of seastacks and surf. We had hills to climb and sail down.

We clocked 43 miles for the day and spent the night at a hiker/biker site in Mackericher State Park, just north of Fort Bragg. Two other cyclists already had their tents set up in the small hiker/biker site. One young man, Greg, was sitting at the picnic table and told us the other tent belonged to a fellow named Carl. We'd heard about Carl, from the UK. He'd been camping with Will at Elk Prairie Campground and Will had run into him again at a Motel 6 in Eureka. Riding down the coast was like that. You heard about other cyclists and wondered if you'd ever meet them. Or you met a cyclist and then asked other riders if they'd seen them. We could also follow cyclists through the Warm Showers network. We often asked if anyone had seen Sam, the young man from Belguim we'd met in Astoria. Last we'd heard he had taken a detour to Mt. Hood. 

We hadn't been paying much attention to the wildfire, now called the Kincade fire, that was burning inland and south of us. It wasn't much under control but was too far away to have any impact on our plans. Or so we thought.

Saturday, October 26. With only 15 miles to Mendocino, we spent the morning going for a walk to the beach, I did some writing, and we took our time packing up, letting things dry, and talking to Carl.

We hadn't seen Carl the night before. We figured he was asleep inside his tent but didn't think to check for his bike. After we made our introductions he told us he'd been in Fort Bragg having a beer with a couple of cyclists from the UK, Brian and Anna. Brian rides a hand cycle and uses a wheelchair. We've heard some pretty amazing stories on this trip that make ours rather ordinary.

Carl is from England and travels with a skateboard on the front of his bike, under his handlebars. An avid skateboarder, he's checking into the skateboarding communities up and down the coast.

As we were packing up a park ranger came by to tell us that they were closing the campground. A "wind event" was predicted for Sonoma County and PG&E was turning off the power throughout Mendocino County in an effort to prevent the spread of the Kincade fire. Van Damme State Park, just outside Mendocino, where we were planning to camp that night, would also be closed. What to do? 

Stealth camping is something many cyclists will do when they cannot find a campground and don't have the money for a motel or there isn't one. Basically it's camping illegally.

Rob and I are pretty much in agreement on stealth camping. We don't do it. We want a water supply and bathroom and to be sleeping in a place known to be safe. But these are extraordinary times. We thought, maybe we'll load up on extra water and go to Van Damme State Park anyway and try our luck there.

When we left around 10:30 we rode with Carl on a bike path along the coast to an extraordinary beach in Fort Bragg. Carl left us and Rob and I found a quiet place to sit and eat our lunch.

On the bike path to Fort Bragg.

The park in Fort Bragg was teeming with people enjoying the gorgeous day. 

Then we went into Fort Bragg to pick up fuel, water, and enough groceries for three days. In the checkout line at the grocery store, I asked the man in front of me, "Can you explain to me why they are turning off the power? They say it's because of the wind. But there's no wind here."

He said, "It's the infrastructure. Our power comes from inland." Evidently, failures in the grid have caused some of the major fires in recent years and a failure in the shutdown last week started the Kincade fire. Looks like power shutdowns are a new reality in California.

"How long will the power be off?" I asked.

"It could be days. It's easy for them to shut down the power. It's turning it back on that takes a while. They have to do all sorts of checks as they turn on one section at a time."

Loaded with plenty of food and water, we set off for Mendocino. I had hopes that someone in Mendocino would hear our story and offer to put us up for the night. You never know.

This new wrinkle in our plans was all part of the adventure, we told ourselves.