HHMC 2010. DAY 7 of 10

270 more great miles. The KOA at Westport to Coffee Creek near the Trinity River.


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So we woke up on the beach. I don't think any of us had a problem sleeping.
(I have no idea why)


There was something about waking up on the beach and knowing we had quite a few more miles of coast line, followed by twisties in the red woods on into the mountains that made it all okay. I had no reservations about leaving that campsite as good as it was. Too much more to see!


We headed out and had a Highway Patrol following us for a while, but even going the speed limit it was easy to pull away from him the turns were so tight. As we headed up the last part of Highway 1 or Pacific Coast Highway we savored the last little bit of ocean view. When we turned inland I was amazed at how think the forest became.
It was so dark that I had to pull up the tinted wind screen and take my sun glasses off. It was like riding at night the tree cover was so dense. The other factor on this road was the turns. They were so tight that the only comparable road was the one over Sonora pass earlier in the trip. I scraped the pegs on the bonneville for the first time on this section. (being a dirt guy I still felt like the rear tire should break loose long before I started leaning that far over! haha!)

I took this video in one of the straightest sections of the road where the trees and turns had started to subside. It was the only place I dare ride one handed.



We took our time getting to Eureka stopping off at a roadside store where we grabbed a giant breakfast burrito. There are a lot of people riding this section of highway 1 and 101 on bikes, the pedal kind. It actually looks like fun, but I can't imagine why they would want to do the 101 which is a busy noisy highway with tractor trailers etc. I would love to bike Highway 1 though!
Once we got our breakfast burrito at the "Peg House" http://www.thepeghouse.net we decided to enjoy the relatively GIANT highway that was the 101. We did 85 to 90 for the next hour enjoying the giant easy sweeping turns.

We pulled into Eureka. I still can't decide whether I think it's a dirty $@!&hole or kind of a cool town. We stopped for gas and Monkey noticed that he may have been over riding the dyna.
At this point his pipe was about half way to being worn through. Whoops!


Enjoying a break in Eureka.


Monkey also noticed that all of this riding had worn his front tire to a point where all of these turns started to seem sketchy. Gotta love having a Harley for this reason: We found the local Harley dealer. Had them through on a new front tire and were on our way within an hour.


Once we were done we couldn't find a single NON-Chain place to eat so we headed for Hippie capitol of the world, Arcata, CA.
Yoga in the park. Got it!


Living in the park. Check!


Shady dudes looking to sell you anything or maybe steal something off of your bike. CHECK!


Awesome food. Definitely!


We decided that we'd rather get our sandwiches and sweet potato fries to go so we hit the road and headed for the mountains. Once we were up in the trees we found an old logging road and sat back to have some lunch.


Oh yah, by the way, we were in bigfoot country.


Look out man!! The brothers.


We headed for Weaverville and stopped off in Salyer to see where my Grandpa had some land. You see, I'm a direct descendant of Bigfoot. Well, maybe a mix, but there was definitely a bigfoot somewhere in my family tree.

Weaverville.
Is that a giant gun?


Well of course it is! A local guy makes these accurate looking, noitwon'tfireweasked, guns. This ones about as long as I am tall it seemed.


We headed north on a little mountain road and started looking for a good place to camp. We had heard so many warnings not to ride too late due to deer that it was definitely on my mind. After pulling into a couple of boring looking campsites we eventually found Coffee Creek. It was a good size creek that looked like it would be pretty nice for fishing. We cruised up it for a while looking for a campsite and decided we'd try the private campgrounds closer to the highway. It was late and the day and we were close to camp so I knew it was all to easy to start relaxing and say, have a crash. We made it to the campgrounds without totally falling apart after a close call involving a red wood.
Again, we seemed to have found the coolest place. The owner of the campground charged us only $15 for a campsite and so we bought some wood to make it an even $20. (especially when he mentioned that all of the wood purchases went towards paying for school for his daughter who was standing right there.) He had a couple of turkeys sitting on the porch like pets! Crazy place, but it felt like a great place to call home for the night.
The campground was almost empty so we picked out a spot next to the creek and settled in.
A happy Scuba had made it through another day! No comment on the odd arm decoration.


Watch out for bigfoot!!


Tomorrow we headed for the northern most point of the trip and from three, there became 1.