Tired start today as I set up my tent under a tree, and while it wasn’t raining, there was a thick fog and the drips from the leaves onto the tent were in no regular pattern. That kept waking me up even after putting my earplugs in. That fog made everything wet, probably even wetter than when we were rained on.
The group started out minus John who was still packing, and we stopped at a very disappointing Walmart to try to rustle lunch and dinner since we didn’t have very many options coming up. I was able to get a phone holder though to replace mine that broke yesterday. John caught up to us at the Walmart and we all started out together, but as usual quickly broke up into different speed groups. It was a damp ride, but The sun finally came out around 12:40 p.m. and the day brightened significantly.
I deviated from the adventure cycling route and rode more on the 101 to avoid some hills and that took me to Fortuna where I had a cup of coffee and a pastry and updated my blogs and caught up on the news.
The highlight of the day was getting to the Avenue of the Giants which snakes through multiple redwood groves that were preserved in the ’20s and ’30s. That’s thanks in part to one couple. The woman whose name I forget, stood between the trees and the logging machinery, and her husband went to court and they started the whole redwood preservation movement. There are now 40,000 acres saved from the axe.
I took pictures of course, but it is really hard to get across the enormity of these trees, especially when there are hundreds of them lining the road. We stayed in the Burlington campground surrounded by redwoods and protected from the coastal mist by the canopy. It was a welcome warm evening and the tents stayed dry and some of the clothes even dried out. Luke & John & Harald provided the evenings roaring fire, and I got a good night’s sleep.
Amazing photos Paul!
😁🙏