Day 14: Eureka, CA to Fort Bragg, CA
A real layup of a day, only 155 miles (not counting side trips).
I woke up in Eugene to a leaden sky, just gray and low. Got the bike loaded up and went straight to the gas station, because the fuel light had been on (ok the bike doesn’t have a fuel light but the warning system was blinking low fuel) since about 20 miles before I’d arrived the night before. I knew I had enough to make it but didn’t want to push my luck this morning running around getting breakfast.
So, after I’d fueled up, I went and got breakfast, nice little place inside a fancy hotel (not the one I stayed at, I was at a cheap place on the edge of Eugene). Sat there and drank my coffee, soaked up a little atmosphere, and then went back out to the bike and headed south.
The 101 this far north is kind of weird, it goes back and forth between being a four lane divided highway, a four lane semi-divided highway, with doubled double yellow lines and a rumble strip, a four lane surface street, and sometimes a two-lane switchback course through redwoods. Actually, in Eureka, it was yet another thing, two one-way streets a block apart. Speed limits vary from 25 to 65, depending on where you are. Usually the less like a highway it is, the slower it is. It goes to a highway pretty quickly at the edge of Eureka, and then stays that way for I don’t know how long. All the way to when I got off, to see the Avenue of the Giants.
Avenue of the Giants is a part of Humboldt Redwoods State Park; it was started in the early 20th century by Save the Redwoods League who still exist and do work with the park. It follows the old path of 101, when it was just a two-lane highway; in that area now there’s a more modern 4 lane section of highway that bypasses the redwoods, and the road is officially CA state Route 254 now. It’s one of the largest old growth groves of coast redwoods (the largest?) in the world. And I didn’t know about it until yesterday.
Anyway. I was going from north to south, and I think the north end has the most spectacular trees, just really nice. Stopped a bunch to take photos and even went for a little hike. The speed limit on the road is technically 55, but nobody was really going that fast. It was maybe the best riding of the whole trip, and it was here, a day and a half from home. 32 miles long and I spent probably two hours driving through. Just really spectacular. I could have spent even more time there, really. There’s camping, so I might come back just for that. I think if I’m not in photo-trip mode I could make it up here in a day? Or come back in the car…
Anyway. It was great. I stopped for a snack sometime in the middle there, ate chips and then moved on, took more photos, cruised, slowly, along. Near the end there was a burger shack type place, I got a milkshake, which I’d been craving since day 2 when there was a dairy queen in Mobridge (remember mobridge?) and I missed getting ice cream. Lot of other things kept happening, and there never was a moment to get one until today.
So I got to the end, merged onto 101, and thought to myself, great, now I have seen the best thing, gotten some pictures for today, let’s get to my hotel and get some dinner. Unfortunately, I had to drive down the 1 to get to Fort Bragg. Highway 1 starts inland, switchbacking through the foothills of the coast range for quite a few miles, where again the official speed limit is 55 but you’d be hard pressed to do that in any vehicle. Maybe a professional with good tires and a couple of runs at it could go that fast. Just a lot of hairpin turns with signs indicating you should only go 20 or 25mph through them. I found with good cornering technique I could go a bit over that, but I’m not great at cornering, like I can turn the bike fine but I’m not dragging knee, especially not loaded with panniers.
So that took a while, and then I got to the coast, and though the road was straighter, I had to stop every 5 minutes to take pictures. There was also construction in a couple places, but I don’t feel like that slowed me down as much as the scenery. Ended up getting to the hotel at around 5:30, maybe 6 hours traveling but a lot of time off the bike because of all the stops to take photos.
Got to my hotel, unloaded, changed into normal non-motorcycle clothes and walked to dinner in the fog. When I think of Fort Bragg, I don’t think of, like, a typical seaside town, but that’s essentially what it is. I haven’t seen an actual Fort, maybe it’s a historical name (wiki says yes, the original fort was abandoned but the town stuck around because of logging and ranches). I’m probably conflating it with another Fort Bragg (yep, there’s one in NC that’s now called Fort Liberty, huge army base).
Walked to North Coast brewing, had dinner and a beer (really good beer, one of the few microbrews doing good belgian stuff), and then walked back. More fog, so I made some photos. I’m a sucker for foggy nights. And that brings us up to now. One more day!
