Back on the blog: Northern California

Hello again, it has been a while!

Rio has now returned to the UK and is studying towards her dream of a Masters in Marine Mammal science at St Andrews. I am still on the road in Southern California. Our last few weeks together were pretty hectic, hence the break in communication. I am now going to try and update the blog with some quick posts (& lots of pictures), to where I am now. I will start with mine and Rio’s final month together. We had a fantastic time and cycled some beautiful roads.

Here are just a few of the highlights:

• Cycling over the the border to California where we stopped at a sign welcoming us to the state, and danced to the song ‘California’ by Phantom Planet. The Northern California coast provided us with plenty of beautiful views.

• We cycled through the avenue of Giants where we felt like mere ants. John Steinbeck described the enormity of these trees so well- ” the redwoods, once seen, create a vision that stays with you always… they are not like any other trees we know, they are the ambassadors of another time.”

• We then overcome the longest climb of our trip to 1800 feet cycling over the Leggett mountains. The fact that we had started at 04:30am meant we were probably half asleep when we did it, so it didn’t seem nearly as hard as we had expected.

• Cycling over the Golden Gate bridge to San Francisco a grand finale to our journey together.

• We had just over two weeks to explore prior to Rios departure. We rode the steep streets of San Francisco and fell in love with the city, hitch-hiked around Lake Tahoe and discovered the majestic area of Yosemite National park.

It was very difficult to say goodbye to Rio, we are just as weird as one another and would often be the only one finding the others awful jokes hilarious. The consolation was that we had so many shared memories of a wonderful time together, a better travelling companion could not have been found. She is now studying a subject that she is passionate about and I am continuing on a solo adventure which is very exciting. Another post will be uploaded soon to update you on what I have been doing since Rio left in August.

Hattie

Blueberries in Bandon

We’re back on the road again after 2 weeks wwoofing on an organic blueberry & cranberry farm. 

 

The farm was just South of a town called Bandon, right by the Pacific Coast in Southern Oregon. The owner, Nick, had bought the farm less than a year previously and we were the first wwoofers there to help out. A majority of our time was spent picking and sorting blueberries, as well as weeding around the bushes. This was the first harvest of the season so we were also able to help at its debut at the Farmer’s Market at Coos Bay. It was good fun and we learnt a lot about working on a small-scale commercial fruit farm. 

 

 Some of the highlights were:

• Travelling around the farm on a quad bike – checking out the 70 acre property full of lakes, sheep, llamas and searching for lobster mushrooms.
• Being invited to a local wedding reception in the old cheese factory in Langlois – which involved a lot of country dancing to the upbeat band playing. This was coincidentally on Hattie’s birthday so we had a double reason to dance!
• Celebrating 4th July on a beach and seeing the fireworks over Bandon.
• Attending an annual dog show, where all the owners were grooming and pampering the plethora of pups.
• Spontaneous road trip to Eugene, where we had a tour around the University of Oregon, and back to Portland where we spent many hours back in Powell’s bookstore and were able to try the famous VooDoo doughnuts (we both had the ‘Dirty Old Bastard’ which was covered in peanut butter & oreos – yum).

    
  It was wonderful having Nick as our host as he joined us in all these activities and provided a lot of laughs when comparing the American vs. English language. It was inspiring to see someone who was just 3 years our elder owning and working on a fully productive farm. We’re excited to keep in touch and see how the farm takes off and prospers with his ownership and lead. After leaving the farm, we’ve seriously missed the enless supply of blueberries on the doorstep!  

Since being back on the road cycling, we realised that we lapsed quite behind on the blog – as most nights we put up a tent and are asleep before it’s dark!  Therefore there’ll be another update soon as we will keep on it more diligently.

  Hattie & Rio

Port Angeles to Portland 🚴

Last week we set off for the journey down to Portland, expecting to do it very casually at about 30 miles per day. However, due to the hot temperature we found ourselves waking at 5am to start cycling in order to avoid the heat – which also allowed us to do 50-60miles per day.

We had been forewarned of the long ardous ride on the 101 Highway from Seattle down to Portland. However, we cycled on the opposite side of the Puget Sound and opted for back roads whenever possible and thus the ride was a really enjoyable, scenic and relatively quiet road – the only small downside with it being longer than the more direct highway route.

During our ride, we had an amazing time staying with Warm Showers hosts, wild camping and meeting fellow bike tourers.

Warm Showers is a website designed to provide a literal warm shower and bed for cyclists. We’ve stayed with three in the past week and all were wonderfully accommodating.
Our first was at a picturesque house on an inlet of the Puget Sound, near Shelton. We stayed there for two nights as we were introduced to the wacky but fun game of Disk Golf and were able to hike & explore a Southern area of the Olympic National Park.

Our second WS host actually came around by invitation, after meeting a fellow tourer on the road and hearing his plans were akin with ours. He had a house lined up in Longview, on the Washington border, and called the couple to check we could come too. They were two keen trikers who enthusiastically opened their home to cyclists after their kids had flown the nest. We had a lovely evening of wine, food and conversation. The following morning, they cycled with us to the Lewis & Clark bridge to send us on our way to Oregon.

Finally, we arrived in Portland after a long hot day of cycling and went straight to an ice-cream shop to refresh & check our internet in the hopes we’d have a reply from our last minute requests. Despite only messaging hosts the night before, we had a few offers and chose to stay with a cheery couple who had two cuddly cats. They made us feel very welcome by cooking us a big dinner and taking us out for pancakes.

We stayed with them for 3 nights and even had a bike tour of the city from our host Ted. He took us to his favourite coffee shop (where we had an incredible affogato), ate at iconic and yummy food carts and cycled along the Esplanade for scenic views of the area. The city also claims to be the ‘bike capital of America’ and we can see why, as it was really bike-friendly and enjoyable to cycle around.

The place itself definitely lived up to its weird and whacky reputation and there were a lot of people that looked like they stepped out of an episode of Portlandia.

Hattie & Rio