Down by the watering hole!

A refreshing jump into the water after cycling 41.59 miles in the ever increasing heat as we head south. This was a well needed energiser as the next morning we set off to attack Legett Hill, a 2000ft ascent. The highest climb of our trip so far and a solid 60 miles to cover!

The pelaton!

Here are a few more of the guys we have met along the way. This is the Avenue of Giants, a world-famous scenic drive which is a 31-mile portion of old Highway 101, which parallels Freeway 101 with its 51,222 acres of redwood groves.

Arcata! The humboldt state!

Here we are July 17th with a rest day in Arcata, the Humboldt State. The weed capital of the USA. A quaint and quirky college town just short of Eureka. Full of hippies, stoners and tweakers. We spent the day strolling around and enjoying the farmers market. I stumbled across this curious looking lady and was intrigued by her concept. I told her my subject, my trip, my ride, with my boys and she created this amazing poem for me!

Only 276 very steep climbing miles to San Francisco. Well ahead of schedule and have around 9 days of rest between now and San Diego!

Redwood State Park!

Here we are Camping in the Redwood state park. We hiked through the trails and saw some of the largest trees on earth.

Hiking amongst giants!

A cheeky little beer in Arcata! A well earned beer i'd say after cycling over 850 miles!

John Steinbeck wrote " The redwoods once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always...from them comes silence and awe. The most irreverent of men, in the presence of redwoods, goes under a spell of wonder and respect".

The World's biggest trees!

Floating tents!

As a relative newcomer to the world of touring bicycles I have grown a weird obsession with the two wheeled machine. I methodically eye up my opponents rides and and almost voyeuristically inspect their gear when they are not looking. I was both stunned and baffled when I came across this tandem recumbent bicycle in a camp site. I stared at this strange contraption for well over 5 minutes. I could not and still cannot to this day fathom nor begin to understand the mechanics of it. It was custom built in Germany and an old couple are battling in what can only be described as a tug of war of a ride across America.

Imagine rolling into Crescent City, California at 10pm with no campsite for another 10 miles. What do you do? Do you continue on, fork out 100 bucks for a nice warm motel or do you stealth camp amongst the trees in a nice open public field. We took option 3. A nice rolling bank and a row of trees kept us adequately hidden from the public eye. Everything was go swimmingly well until 1am when a sudden blast of water swung by my tent. "oh shit, it must be a ranger or a cop trying to wake us up and move us on". So I open my tent door and pop my head out like an alarmed gopher to investigate. What are the chances? We have plotted up on a field with 20 high powered sprinklers blasting ice cold water all over our tents. As I refocus my vision I see a half naked Simon the crazy French bastard running towards a jet and diving on top of it like a lunatic desperately trying to cover it with pots, pans and eventually some socks. So anyway assured it would stop after an hour we all went back to sleep. 3 hours pass by and suddenly i'm taking on water. I'm talking women and children first, there's not enough life boats by half kind of water. Our tents were literally floating on 3 inches of water. The sprinklers had burst and had flooded the small valley we were so happily sleeping on. So 24 hour denny's all you can eat pancakes for $4, yes please I'll take that!