Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Goin' to Barcelona
I just found out (for the second time) that I'm going to be going to Barcelona next week. I originally heard about it from my manager, Dean, yesterday afternoon. But about an hour later he mentioned that they had changed their mind and wanted to send "Category Specialists" instead of engineers. Well, today, they have apparently changed their mind again and want to send me to Barcelona to work the Brainshare Barcelona Novell tradeshow. I'll be leaving the 9th of September and be back on the 18th. Now if I can only manage to get a passport in the next 9 days. I'm headed to the passport office right now. Cross your fingers for me.
Sunday, August 28, 2005
Ponder This
While riding through Northern Washington I saw a sign on the side of a barn that read, "Ponder this: Research may cause cancer in mice."
Saturday, August 27, 2005
Day Eighteen - Home Sweet Home
After riding 650 miles through the Arizona, Nevada and Utah desert, I have finally made it home safe. Hurrah! My eye was still a little swolen today but at least I was able to see out of it. It was still bad enough that I scared the hell out of everyone that I came within 10 feet of. There was one cashier who appeared so disturbed by it that she wouldn't look me in the face the whole time that she was ringing me up.
The trip rang in at a total of 5325 miles. I travelled through 9 states (Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, Nevada), passed through, camped in or hiked in 7 National Parks (Grand Teton, Yellowstone, Glacier, North Cascades, Olympic, Redwood, Joshua Tree) and 3 National Recreation Areas (Ross Lake, Golden Gate, Santa Monica Mountains).
I think that the highlights of the trip were:
1. Hiking and camping with Chris and Sean in Glacier National Park.
2. Riding through and hiking in Olympic National Park.
3. Riding the Oregon Coast.
4. Hiking in Redwood National Park.
5. Having 2 1/2 weeks of riding, camping and hiking to clear my head.
The trip rang in at a total of 5325 miles. I travelled through 9 states (Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, Nevada), passed through, camped in or hiked in 7 National Parks (Grand Teton, Yellowstone, Glacier, North Cascades, Olympic, Redwood, Joshua Tree) and 3 National Recreation Areas (Ross Lake, Golden Gate, Santa Monica Mountains).
I think that the highlights of the trip were:
1. Hiking and camping with Chris and Sean in Glacier National Park.
2. Riding through and hiking in Olympic National Park.
3. Riding the Oregon Coast.
4. Hiking in Redwood National Park.
5. Having 2 1/2 weeks of riding, camping and hiking to clear my head.
Day Seventeen - A Day in the ER
Friday August 26th
On a trip this long you are bound to sacrifice at least one day of riding to appease the motorcycle gods. Today was that day for me. I spent the better part of the afternoon in the emergency room of the La Paz hospital in Parker, AZ. Now before you get all worried (whoever the collective YOU might be), it wasn't for anything life threatening... at least not directly.
I was stung by some sort of insect yesterday afternoon as I was leaving San Diego via Interstate 8. I'm not sure how it managed to sting me considering that it slammed into my forehead at about 80 miles per hour and exploded on impact. But somehow it managed to get some or maybe even a lot of venom beneath my skin as it's last “fuck you” before dying. It was kind of itchy at first and a little swolen but it wasn't all that bad.
Things got worse over night. When I woke up this morning the swelling had dropped from my forehead down to my eye and made it so that I could only barely open my eye. An hour or so later my eye was completely shut from the swelling. At first I was just going to tough it out, I was hoping that it would get better in a couple of hours. But as the swelling got worse and worse I decided that I needed to do something about it.
I stopped in the nearest town and took some benadryl that I had fortuitously packed away in my t-bags. I also put some ice on my eye hoping to reduce the swelling. Neither worked. It was at this point that I decided that I needed to stop in the nearest town and seek medical advice. Unfortunately the nearest town was over 100 miles away so I had to toughen up and ride one-eyed through 100 miles of desert.
Riding with only one good eye is somewhat of a challenge. Your depth perception and peripheral vision are totally screwed. I would instinctively look over my right shoulder every time that I wanted to switch lanes to the right only to realize that it was impossible to see behind me to the right using only my left eye.
Despite the challenge of riding one-eyed I was mostly concerned about what would happen if the swelling continued to spread. What if the swelling crossed over into my left and couldn't see out of either of my eyes? Assuming that I could survive pulling the bike over to the side of the road without killing myself, I imagined myself blind on the side of the road trying to flag down someone to help me. What if the swelling continued around my head (which it was starting to do) and affected my inner ear somehow. Riding a motorcycle is all about balance and problems with my inner ear would almost certainly spell fatality.
Somehow I managed to make it to Parker, AZ in one piece. After scaring people with my grotesquely swolen mug at both the convenience store and a local doctor's office, I finally made it to the emergency room at the La Paz Hospital. This was my first experience in an emergency room. It didn't seem nearly as coordinated as I expected it to be. There seemed to be a gap in the communication between myself, the doctor and the nurses.
The doctor seemed to overly cautious. It seemed pretty obvious to me and anyone else that looked at me that I was suffering from an allergic reaction to an insect bite or sting. First he wanted to give me a tetnis shot since I hadn't had one recently. I couldn't figure out what the hell tetnis had to do with a bug bite. On the one hand, it was a general immunization so it wouldn't hurt to get it. On the other hand I was concerned about the price of a tetnis shot administered in the emergency room instead of a doctor's office.
Next the doctor gave me a shot of eipnephrine to prevent anaphalactic shock even though I explained that I wasn't having any respiratory problems and that I don't usually have respiratory problems when I'm stung by bees or wasps.
Finally there was a whole debacle over whether or not it was safe to give me a shot of benadryl since I was driving a motorcycle. Normally they would require someone else to drive you home after getting a shot of benadryl. The nurse was concerned that she would be liable if I was to wreck after she administered the shot knowing that I intended to drive. The doctor seemed to be leaning towards keeping me in the hospital overnight to avoid any problems. I tried to convey to him how unnecessary I thought all this trouble was. He finally backed down and said that he would keep me for just a few hours for observation and then release me if I didn't seem to be too groggy from the medication. The nurse was still reluctant.
I was pretty pissed off about the whole thing. I figured that if the benadryl made me drowsy (which it usually doesn't) then I would stick around and take a nap. If it didn't make me drowsy then I didn't see any problem in leaving. The most frustrating thing was feeling captive to these people. It' s like once you check yourself in, you reliquish all control of your life until you are released.
I did managed to convince the nurse to let me run out to my bike to get my book from my t-bags before they administered the benadryl. I spent the next several hours alternating between reading, listening to the other patients and staring at the ceiling. The tough part was that I really wanted to take a nap but couldn't. I don't think that the medication was making me drowsy but sitting in a cold emergency room and doing nothing after spending the morning riding in the hot sun would make anyone ready for a nap. I was worried that if I dozed off that the doctor would take that as a sign that I was reacting poorly to the medication and then would try to keep me overnight in the hospital. I forced myself to stay awake at all costs.
The patient in the bed next to mine was a 7 year old boy who had fallen during a seizure and cut open his chin. It didn't seem like the cut was that bad but he went into four more seizures just in the time that he was in the ER. The seizures weren't that bad, he would just go limp and lose consciousness for about 30 seconds. I couldn't actually see him through the curtains but I could hear the doctor and nurse talking with the family.
It was kind of sad to have to hear a kid in pain from medical treatment. The worst part was when they tried to feed him medication through his IV. He kept telling the nurse that the medication was burning inside of his arm but she wouldn't believe him until his arm started to develop a rash. They had to reduce the flow of the IV three times before the kid was actually OK. At one point he was crying about the pain and trying to pull out the IV but they wouldn't let him. I almost passed out just hearing what he was going through.
It also sounded like the kid was a victim of medical ignorance. Apparently he had just started a new medication within the last week and the new medication had tripled the frequency of his seizures. You could tell from the tone of the ER doctors voice that he was incredulous that this kid had been prescribed this medication even though he was trying to make it sound like the doctor who prescribed it was not a total idiot. He was also incredulous that they were seeing just a general family practitioner for seizures this bad instead of seeing a neurology specialist. Poor kid.
I did do a little bit of hiking this morning. I got about 200 yards down the trail before realizing that a) I wasn't very well prepared for desert hiking and b) it was really pretty stupid to hike 3 miles into the middle of the desert with the problems that I was having with my eye and face. I guess that I'll have to make a trip back to Joshua Tree some other time. I'm guessing that a spring or fall visit would be much better than a summer visit anyway.
I had hoped to at least drive through the park since I wasn't able to hike through it, but it turns out that the road through the park was closed for some reason. The road was only open to the visitor center and campground. Later in the morning I also discovered that the highway that ran past the North entrance of the park was also closed. Now I'm really curious to know what was going on. It was fun to cook up conspiracy theories. Was there an alien landing in the park? Was the border patrol searching for some illegal Mexicans in the park? I suppose that if I could get online the park web page would tell me exactly what the reason for the closure was.
Tonight is my last night on the road. If all goes well tomorrow then I should be home in the later afternoon or early evening. It's been a fun trip but I think that I'm ready to be home. I'm a little bummed that I'm spending my last night in a Motel 6 instead of at a campground but I guess such is the nature of medical misfortune.
Day Sixteen - Welcome Back to the Desert
Thursday August 25th
The campground here are Joshua Tree National Park is almost completely deserted. Seriously, there are like two other people in the whole campground. I haven't even actually seen the people but I've seen flashlights and heard voices in the distance. It is almost kind of creepy. As I was walking down the road to register for my campsite I could hear all sorts of creepy crawlies rustling in the roadside bushes.
I was late getting to my campsite and just barely had enough light to set the tent up. It's funny how I have a tendency to choose a place to stop just at the outer limits of what is comfortable. Had I gotten to the campsite 20 minutes later it would have been a real bitch trying to setup camp.
I left the campground at Point Mugu pretty early this morning. I wanted to get through the Los Angeles area before morning traffic really started to pick up. I stayed on the Pacific Coast Highway all the way until it met up with Interstate 5 just south of Orange County. Once the highway passed through Santa Monica I was mostly riding through the city and wasn't on the “coast” anymore. You couldn't call it a scenic drive but it was interesting to pass through all of the different cities in the Los Angeles area. It particularly struck me how different two neighborhoods could be when separated by only a few blocks.
I spent nearly an hour driving through downtown San Diego trying to find a non existent Harley dealership. I am guessing that it was a dinky little t-shirt shop that was tucked away in another building similar to the one in Seattle. After getting directions from a guy on a Gold Wing I was finally able to stumble across the real dealership.
The girl that checked me out at the dealership was kind of rude. After picking out a t-shirt I asked where I should pay for it. She told me that she would be with me in a couple of minutes after she was done doing something that looked incredibly unimportant and easily interruptible.
After picking up the t-shirt I stopped by a bar to try and beat the heat with a couple of cold beers. While at the bar I met a girl named Hazel. When I say that I “met” her, I don't mean that we hooked up or anything, just that I had an interesting conversation with her. It turns out that she was from Hawaii and went to Kahuku High School. She owns a small bakery in San Diego and also rides a crotch rocket. Now there's the kind of girl that I need to meet back in Utah.
Once I started riding east out of San Diego everything started to change from the last couple of days. The temperature started to rise, I was gaining elevation, and the scenery quickly changed from coastal to desert. It reminded me how much I like riding through the desert. Even though the coast, and mountains and forests are all pretty to ride through, I will always have a special place in my heart for the desert. Even when the scenery isn't particularly beautiful there is something about riding through great wide open space that makes me feel like a cowboy in the old west. It gives me an incredible sense of freedom.
The bugs are attacking the tent trying to sniff out the light from the laptop. I guess that's a good sign that it's time to go to bed. Good Night.
The campground here are Joshua Tree National Park is almost completely deserted. Seriously, there are like two other people in the whole campground. I haven't even actually seen the people but I've seen flashlights and heard voices in the distance. It is almost kind of creepy. As I was walking down the road to register for my campsite I could hear all sorts of creepy crawlies rustling in the roadside bushes.
I was late getting to my campsite and just barely had enough light to set the tent up. It's funny how I have a tendency to choose a place to stop just at the outer limits of what is comfortable. Had I gotten to the campsite 20 minutes later it would have been a real bitch trying to setup camp.
I left the campground at Point Mugu pretty early this morning. I wanted to get through the Los Angeles area before morning traffic really started to pick up. I stayed on the Pacific Coast Highway all the way until it met up with Interstate 5 just south of Orange County. Once the highway passed through Santa Monica I was mostly riding through the city and wasn't on the “coast” anymore. You couldn't call it a scenic drive but it was interesting to pass through all of the different cities in the Los Angeles area. It particularly struck me how different two neighborhoods could be when separated by only a few blocks.
I spent nearly an hour driving through downtown San Diego trying to find a non existent Harley dealership. I am guessing that it was a dinky little t-shirt shop that was tucked away in another building similar to the one in Seattle. After getting directions from a guy on a Gold Wing I was finally able to stumble across the real dealership.
The girl that checked me out at the dealership was kind of rude. After picking out a t-shirt I asked where I should pay for it. She told me that she would be with me in a couple of minutes after she was done doing something that looked incredibly unimportant and easily interruptible.
After picking up the t-shirt I stopped by a bar to try and beat the heat with a couple of cold beers. While at the bar I met a girl named Hazel. When I say that I “met” her, I don't mean that we hooked up or anything, just that I had an interesting conversation with her. It turns out that she was from Hawaii and went to Kahuku High School. She owns a small bakery in San Diego and also rides a crotch rocket. Now there's the kind of girl that I need to meet back in Utah.
Once I started riding east out of San Diego everything started to change from the last couple of days. The temperature started to rise, I was gaining elevation, and the scenery quickly changed from coastal to desert. It reminded me how much I like riding through the desert. Even though the coast, and mountains and forests are all pretty to ride through, I will always have a special place in my heart for the desert. Even when the scenery isn't particularly beautiful there is something about riding through great wide open space that makes me feel like a cowboy in the old west. It gives me an incredible sense of freedom.
The bugs are attacking the tent trying to sniff out the light from the laptop. I guess that's a good sign that it's time to go to bed. Good Night.
Day Fifteen - Deathwish on the California Coast
Wednesday August 24th
I just ingested enough grease to kill an elephant. I'm camping in the Sycamore Canyon campground of Point Mugu State Park just south of Ventura, California and the choice of places to eat within reasonable driving distance of the campground was limited. So, I ended up having dinner at Neptune's Net seafood; a cozy little fish and chips place just a stones throw from the ocean off of Hwy 1.
The California coastline redeemed itself today. Today was a much better day of riding. I'm not sure if the road was more sane than it was yesterday or if I was less so. Whatever the case, I was riding much more aggressively today and enjoying it. Nothing gets the adrenaline pumping like crossing that double line to pass someone on a winding two lane coastal road. Is someone coming around that next corner? Maybe, Maybe Not.
Speaking of riding dangerously, I rode in between lanes of stopped traffic for the first time today. I've heard that it's legal in California to do that. I have my doubts that it's really legal; I think that it's just so commonly done that nobody cares. It also seems like it would be pretty tough to enforce a law against it.
I've passed through California before and seen other bikers splitting traffic but was always too chicken to do it myself. It's difficult enough for people to see bikers when they are using the same lanes as everyone else. But today I was just frustrated with the traffic in Santa Barbara and also felt a little silly sitting there in the car lane as half a dozen bikes pulled past me. So, I hopped in between the two lanes of cars and just started cruising. It felt great.
I think that part of what accounted for a better day of riding today was that I didn't spend the entire day on the road. I broke up the day by stopping in Monterey to visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It wasn't the best aquarium that I've ever been to (The Shedd Aquarium in Chicago is better in my opinion) but it was still a good diversion. I was disappointed that they didn't have dolphins or whales to see. However, the jellyfish and the giant octopus were pretty cool.
I thought that it was interesting that the Monterey Bay Aquarium had a “petting” area where you could touch all of the various sea creatures from crabs to starfish to anenome to various types of snails and sea cucumbers. It just seemed weird that these animals' whole purpose in life was to be fondled by curious children. What a woeful existence.
It's funny how the price of staying in a campground is increasing as I travel South. I was paying $10 in Olympic National Park, $16 in Seal Rock, Oregon, $20 in Redwood National Park and now I am paying $25 to stay in Point Mugu State Park. The campground isn't even really all that nice. There is absolutely no privacy between sites. The site next to mine is about 6 feet away from my tent and separated only by about 6 ft. of grass. I suppose that I'm just grateful to have a place to camp. I'm glad not to have to a repeat of last night where I had to drive 50 miles in the dark and then pay $100 for a hotel room.
I just ingested enough grease to kill an elephant. I'm camping in the Sycamore Canyon campground of Point Mugu State Park just south of Ventura, California and the choice of places to eat within reasonable driving distance of the campground was limited. So, I ended up having dinner at Neptune's Net seafood; a cozy little fish and chips place just a stones throw from the ocean off of Hwy 1.
The California coastline redeemed itself today. Today was a much better day of riding. I'm not sure if the road was more sane than it was yesterday or if I was less so. Whatever the case, I was riding much more aggressively today and enjoying it. Nothing gets the adrenaline pumping like crossing that double line to pass someone on a winding two lane coastal road. Is someone coming around that next corner? Maybe, Maybe Not.
Speaking of riding dangerously, I rode in between lanes of stopped traffic for the first time today. I've heard that it's legal in California to do that. I have my doubts that it's really legal; I think that it's just so commonly done that nobody cares. It also seems like it would be pretty tough to enforce a law against it.
I've passed through California before and seen other bikers splitting traffic but was always too chicken to do it myself. It's difficult enough for people to see bikers when they are using the same lanes as everyone else. But today I was just frustrated with the traffic in Santa Barbara and also felt a little silly sitting there in the car lane as half a dozen bikes pulled past me. So, I hopped in between the two lanes of cars and just started cruising. It felt great.
I think that part of what accounted for a better day of riding today was that I didn't spend the entire day on the road. I broke up the day by stopping in Monterey to visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It wasn't the best aquarium that I've ever been to (The Shedd Aquarium in Chicago is better in my opinion) but it was still a good diversion. I was disappointed that they didn't have dolphins or whales to see. However, the jellyfish and the giant octopus were pretty cool. I thought that it was interesting that the Monterey Bay Aquarium had a “petting” area where you could touch all of the various sea creatures from crabs to starfish to anenome to various types of snails and sea cucumbers. It just seemed weird that these animals' whole purpose in life was to be fondled by curious children. What a woeful existence.
It's funny how the price of staying in a campground is increasing as I travel South. I was paying $10 in Olympic National Park, $16 in Seal Rock, Oregon, $20 in Redwood National Park and now I am paying $25 to stay in Point Mugu State Park. The campground isn't even really all that nice. There is absolutely no privacy between sites. The site next to mine is about 6 feet away from my tent and separated only by about 6 ft. of grass. I suppose that I'm just grateful to have a place to camp. I'm glad not to have to a repeat of last night where I had to drive 50 miles in the dark and then pay $100 for a hotel room.
Day Fourteen - Crossing through the Golden Gate
Tuesday August 23rd
Today was a long, hard day of riding. I couldn't find the campground that I had picked out on the map and it was getting too dark to ride so I stopped for the night at a Ramada Inn in Santa Cruz, California. The room is much more pricey than I would normally go for, but I was getting desperate. At least it's a nice room with wireless Internet access.
When I pulled into Santa Cruz at about quarter to 9 I told myself that I would stop at the first hotel that I saw and stay there as long as the room was less than $100. The Ramada was asking $99. The funny thing is that when I went out for dinner I walked past 3 hotels in a two block radius that were almost certainly cheaper. I guess that's the price of being impatient :)
I took a look at the map that I have on the computer and realized that the campground that I was looking for wasn't even located on the highway that I was driving along. I picked the campground by looking at my Harley map which doesn't have a lot of detail. On that map it looked like the campground was right off of Hwy 1.
The highlight of the day was seeing and then driving across the Golden Gate bridge. I stopped briefly at the Golden Gate National Recreation Area visitors center to pick up a National Park map for the area. Ironically I was originally going to camp there but I figured that I would press on a little further to get south of San Francisco so that I didn't have to deal with the morning traffic.
Speaking of traffic, I really wasn't thinking when I planned my ride today. I arrived in the San Francisco area right around 5 P.M. just in time for the worst of the evening rush hour. I feared for my life once or twice as I rode through a city full of crazy people. I'm kidding. The people weren't that crazy, it was just difficult to adjust to driving in city traffic after riding 3500 miles through backroads.
Most of the riding that I did for the rest of the day was unspectacular. There were some pretty areas on the coast but I think that the Oregon coast was prettier. It was certainly more green in Oregon, whereas the California coast south of Eureka seemed kind of dry and brown.
I also decided today that there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Normally I like really twisty roads but after about 20 miles on the Shoreline Hwy I was getting a little tired of the twisties. I was spending all of my time focusing on the road and was having a difficult time just enjoying the scenery.
The ride when something like this: speed up, shift up, shift up, slow down, shift down, lean, shift down, accelerate, shift up, slow down, shift down, lean, etc. I think that it was particularly tense considering that the road was kind of narrow and, in a lot of places, didn't even have a barrier to keep you from falling a couple of hundred feet into the ocean below.
Today was a long, hard day of riding. I couldn't find the campground that I had picked out on the map and it was getting too dark to ride so I stopped for the night at a Ramada Inn in Santa Cruz, California. The room is much more pricey than I would normally go for, but I was getting desperate. At least it's a nice room with wireless Internet access.
When I pulled into Santa Cruz at about quarter to 9 I told myself that I would stop at the first hotel that I saw and stay there as long as the room was less than $100. The Ramada was asking $99. The funny thing is that when I went out for dinner I walked past 3 hotels in a two block radius that were almost certainly cheaper. I guess that's the price of being impatient :)
I took a look at the map that I have on the computer and realized that the campground that I was looking for wasn't even located on the highway that I was driving along. I picked the campground by looking at my Harley map which doesn't have a lot of detail. On that map it looked like the campground was right off of Hwy 1.
The highlight of the day was seeing and then driving across the Golden Gate bridge. I stopped briefly at the Golden Gate National Recreation Area visitors center to pick up a National Park map for the area. Ironically I was originally going to camp there but I figured that I would press on a little further to get south of San Francisco so that I didn't have to deal with the morning traffic.
Speaking of traffic, I really wasn't thinking when I planned my ride today. I arrived in the San Francisco area right around 5 P.M. just in time for the worst of the evening rush hour. I feared for my life once or twice as I rode through a city full of crazy people. I'm kidding. The people weren't that crazy, it was just difficult to adjust to driving in city traffic after riding 3500 miles through backroads.
Most of the riding that I did for the rest of the day was unspectacular. There were some pretty areas on the coast but I think that the Oregon coast was prettier. It was certainly more green in Oregon, whereas the California coast south of Eureka seemed kind of dry and brown.
I also decided today that there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Normally I like really twisty roads but after about 20 miles on the Shoreline Hwy I was getting a little tired of the twisties. I was spending all of my time focusing on the road and was having a difficult time just enjoying the scenery.
The ride when something like this: speed up, shift up, shift up, slow down, shift down, lean, shift down, accelerate, shift up, slow down, shift down, lean, etc. I think that it was particularly tense considering that the road was kind of narrow and, in a lot of places, didn't even have a barrier to keep you from falling a couple of hundred feet into the ocean below.
Day Thirteen - Hiking in the Redwoods
Monday August 23rd
I recovered from my funk today. I had a good day of hiking in Redwood National and State Parks. I pluralize parks because the Redwood National Park area is actually comprised of national park land and 3 or 4 different California state parks. For instance, my campground is actually in Del Norte Coast State Park and I did some hiking yesterday in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. Come to think of it I really didn't spend that much time in the National Park itself except as I was driving through on the highway.
My first hike of the day was the Damnation Creek Trail in Del Norte Coast State Park. The trail descended 1000 ft. over 2.1 miles through old growth redwoods down to the coast. The fog was still lingering in the trees as I passed through the forest and made for what I hope will be some pretty cool pictures. The beach was pretty rocky where the trail ended but I hiked up the beach a half mile or so and found a nice stretch of black sand. It was very cool to walk down the beach and then look back and see only my footprints in the sand.
I was thinking while I was on the beach how ironic it is that I've spent so much time hiking to coast when there have been numerous opportunities to just stop at the beach as I'm driving past. Why hike 2 miles to the beach when you can just hike 200 ft from a parking lot? It wasn't until I was walking through the black sand yesterday that I finally understood the answer. Solitude. It is just a totally different experience walking down the beach all alone then it is to be surrounded by other people with the noise of the highway ever present.
One of the reasons that I chose the damnation creek trail was because I had several people tell me how difficult it was. I guess if you are from coastal California then 1000 ft. of elevation change over 2.1 miles sounds like a lot. For a guy that is used to hiking in the mountains in Utah it really didn't sound that bad. The weekend before I left for this trip I hiked a trail in Maple Canyon that ascended 5000 ft. in 5.1 miles. There was quite a bit of elevation change on the damnation creek trail but the switchbacks were cut so tight that it really wasn't much of a problem. As I was hiking back up the trail from the coast I was moving at almost a jogging pace.
My next hike was a 3.7 mile loop made of 3 different trails in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. It was actually recommended to me by a ranger at the visitor's center who was all amazed that I would still want to do more hiking after doing the Damnation Creek Trail. I decided to take my time on this trail and just kind of meandered through the woods. It was really nice.
I just got the warning that my laptop battery is low so I'll have to see how much more I can type before the laptop totally quits.
After hiking I decided to head back into town to see a movie. It's been nearly a week and a half since I've seen a move which is rather unprecedented for me :) I ended up seeing the “40 Year Old Virgin”. It was actually pretty funny. Granted the humor was mostly targeted at 13 year old boys but I guess every once in a while that's not horrible. It was a little scary how I could relate to the main character. Of course I'm not a virgin, but being on a 5 year drought I might as well be.
I recovered from my funk today. I had a good day of hiking in Redwood National and State Parks. I pluralize parks because the Redwood National Park area is actually comprised of national park land and 3 or 4 different California state parks. For instance, my campground is actually in Del Norte Coast State Park and I did some hiking yesterday in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. Come to think of it I really didn't spend that much time in the National Park itself except as I was driving through on the highway.
My first hike of the day was the Damnation Creek Trail in Del Norte Coast State Park. The trail descended 1000 ft. over 2.1 miles through old growth redwoods down to the coast. The fog was still lingering in the trees as I passed through the forest and made for what I hope will be some pretty cool pictures. The beach was pretty rocky where the trail ended but I hiked up the beach a half mile or so and found a nice stretch of black sand. It was very cool to walk down the beach and then look back and see only my footprints in the sand.
I was thinking while I was on the beach how ironic it is that I've spent so much time hiking to coast when there have been numerous opportunities to just stop at the beach as I'm driving past. Why hike 2 miles to the beach when you can just hike 200 ft from a parking lot? It wasn't until I was walking through the black sand yesterday that I finally understood the answer. Solitude. It is just a totally different experience walking down the beach all alone then it is to be surrounded by other people with the noise of the highway ever present.
One of the reasons that I chose the damnation creek trail was because I had several people tell me how difficult it was. I guess if you are from coastal California then 1000 ft. of elevation change over 2.1 miles sounds like a lot. For a guy that is used to hiking in the mountains in Utah it really didn't sound that bad. The weekend before I left for this trip I hiked a trail in Maple Canyon that ascended 5000 ft. in 5.1 miles. There was quite a bit of elevation change on the damnation creek trail but the switchbacks were cut so tight that it really wasn't much of a problem. As I was hiking back up the trail from the coast I was moving at almost a jogging pace.
My next hike was a 3.7 mile loop made of 3 different trails in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. It was actually recommended to me by a ranger at the visitor's center who was all amazed that I would still want to do more hiking after doing the Damnation Creek Trail. I decided to take my time on this trail and just kind of meandered through the woods. It was really nice.
I just got the warning that my laptop battery is low so I'll have to see how much more I can type before the laptop totally quits.
After hiking I decided to head back into town to see a movie. It's been nearly a week and a half since I've seen a move which is rather unprecedented for me :) I ended up seeing the “40 Year Old Virgin”. It was actually pretty funny. Granted the humor was mostly targeted at 13 year old boys but I guess every once in a while that's not horrible. It was a little scary how I could relate to the main character. Of course I'm not a virgin, but being on a 5 year drought I might as well be.
Day Twelve - On the Road to the Redwoods
Sunday August 21st
Tonight is going to be an early night. It's only 20 to 9 and it's already pretty dark here in the California Redwoods. I was thinking about going to a movie but I really didn't feel like riding the 10 miles back into town. I also had the option of buying firewood from the campground host and lighting a fire but it just sounds like too much work right now and it's not even cold enough that a fire would feel really good. So, I sit here at my picnic table pecking away at this laptop.
I've kind of been in a funk today. Actually the funk has been building since yesterday. I think that it all started with not eating very good for the last couple of days. I've actually managed to eat reasonably healthy thus far on the trip. I've been doing a lot of Subway and ordering extra veggies. I have also been trying to eat a lot of fruit. Most importantly, I've been trying not to pig out on any one meal. Most of the trip that hasn't been a problem because I have been doing so much hiking that even when I ate large meals they were offset by the amount of activity that I did that day. Today was the first day of the whole trip were I was doing a solid day of riding for the second day in a row.
It all started with breakfast yesterday. I had just come off of my 13.5 miles of hiking the previous night and I was pretty hungry. I stopped in Forks, Washington and ordered a Country Skillet. The skillet probably had enough potatoes, country fried steak and gravy to feed a small country. I could have eaten just half of it and would have been pretty full. But for some reason I kept forcing myself to keep eating. I did leave the last couple of bites on the plate but the damage had already been done.
It was so late by the time that I was hungry for lunch that I decided to skip lunch and just wait until dinner. In my experience this is never a good idea because usually it means that I am so hungry by the time that dinner comes around that I make poor food choices. I'm not sure that a Turkey and Bacon Subway sandwich stacked with veggies counts as a poor food choice but the fact that I had a full 12 inch sandwich instead of my normal 6 inch just added to the mass of food that was festering in my stomach.
When I woke up this morning I was determined to have a light breakfast since I knew that I would have another full day of riding and not a whole lot of exercise. Unfortunately my choices in the small town of Seal Rock, Oregon were limited. After tossing my laundry in the washer at the laundromat I walked over to a little espresso stand (which seem to be everywhere in Washington and Oregon) and ordered a large coffee and piece of banana bread.
Similar to the effect that I experienced the previous day the light breakfast just meant that I was that much hungrier for lunch. I stopped at Wendy's in Roseburg, Oregon and got a Monterey Ranch Chicken Sandwich, a fruit cup and a broccoli and cheese baked potato.
Shortly after finishing lunch I was already hungry again. I think that this is the effect of not eating good food. My body was trying to tell me that it needed some substantial nutrition. By the time that dinner came around I was so hungry that I once again ignored what my body was trying to tell me and went with the easy route. I stopped at a chinese restaurant and had some garlic chicken, roast pork and chicken chow mein. The only vegetables in the whole plate were the little pieces of cabbage in the chow mein.
As I look back on the list of what I ate over the last day it really doesn't sound all that bad. I think that the real problem though isn't the food that is on the list of things that I ate, it's the food that's missing from that list. Part of my weight loss strategy has been to 'fill' myself up with good food so that I'm not as hungry for less healthy food. On an average day at home I eat a fairly substantial quantity of fresh fruits and vegetables. I feel that's what has been missing from my diet over the last couple of days. The fact that I have not been getting my normal amount of exercise may have also contributed to the funk.
Somehow I doubt that the description of my diet over the last couple days could possibly be interesting to anyone but myself (and that may even be debatable as I look back on this in a few days). But that is what was on my mind just now so that's what I wrote about.
Fortunately my dietary funk was not the only noteworthy experience today. I think that the most memorable experience of the day was watching some seals ride the surf off of Oregon coastline. When I planned this trip it didn't even occur to me that I might see ocean wildlife as I made the journey. I just thought that it would be a pretty ride. But so far I have seen starfish, anenome, seals and sea lions. It seems so strange to me to see all of these in the 'wild'. I've only ever seen seals and sea lions in an aquarium before today.
Another highlight of the day was stopping through Roseburg, Oregon where I was born nearly 29 years ago. I stopped to take a picture at the city's welcome sign. The sign was placed near a busy intersection where I'm sure that everybody was wondering what the hell I was doing propping up my camera on a pile of rocks to try and get myself into the picture via a timed photo. While in Roseburg I stopped for lunch at Wendy's (the only Wendy's in the whole state of Oregon as far as I could tell) and then camped out at a Comfort Inn parking lot to steal some free wireless internet access.
I was surprised that no one came out of the hotel to ask what the hell I was doing sitting in the middle of an empty parking lot pounding away on a laptop keyboard. I was hoping to get my journal entries posted onto my website but I discovered that my website has gone offline. So, I guess by the time that you (whoever you are) read this I will probably already be home. Lacking the ability to update my website I just emailed my sister Marci to let her know that I was still alive and then I packed up the laptop and moved on.
Other than the sidetrip to Roseburg (which was about a 150 mile detour) I spent the whole day on Hwy 101; otherwise known as the Pacific Coast Highway. Most people don't realize that the Pacific Coast Highway is only right on the coast for about a third of it's distance. A good portion of the time you are a mile or more inland and the remainder of the time you are close to the coast but can't really see the beach or the water. Even if you were only on the actual coast for one tenth of the distance it would still be a worthwhile ride. The scenery is breathtaking.
Since I ended up camping last night when I had originally planned to stay in a hotel I felt like I owed myself a night's stay in a hotel. I didn't have any immediate plans to stay in a hotel since I had managed to do my laundry, shower and connect to the internet today. However, I did nearly cash in that option tonight. When I crossed the border into California the fog had rolled in from the ocean and it was starting to get a little chilly. I was tired from riding all day and was thinking how nice it would feel to just plunk myself down into a hotel room without having to go through the trouble of setting up camp.
After eating dinner at the Chinese restaurant I stopped at the Penny Saver Inn to check on room prices. How could you go wrong with a name like “Penny Saver”? They wanted $60 for a night in the hotel. That's really not all that much but the place was a shit hole. It's the sort of place that I was expecting to pay 40 to 50 dollars. You know it's a real quality hotel when you have to check out the remote control for your room from the front desk. It tells you that their normal clientèle are the type of people that steal TV remotes. I just couldn't stomach the price and I decided to press on to a campground.
Ironically the campground prices were also pretty ridiculous. It's costing me $20 a night to stay in a California State Park campground (Redwood National Park is actually jointly managed by the Department of the Interior and the state of California). I only spent $10 a night at Olympic National Park. I suppose that the campsite is pretty nice and they do have showers in the campground.
I was expecting to self-register like I do at most National Park campgrounds, but was surprised to find a ranger manning the entrance station to the campground. The ranger was a younger female and was kind of pretty and very friendly. So friendly in fact that it almost seemed like she was flirting with me. So, I flirted back a little bit. I must have picked up the wrong vibe from her because when I started to flirt back she not-so-subtlety mentioned that today was her last day of summer before going back to high school tomorrow. Ick! I felt like a dirty old man. I swear that she looked like she was at least 24.
Tonight is going to be an early night. It's only 20 to 9 and it's already pretty dark here in the California Redwoods. I was thinking about going to a movie but I really didn't feel like riding the 10 miles back into town. I also had the option of buying firewood from the campground host and lighting a fire but it just sounds like too much work right now and it's not even cold enough that a fire would feel really good. So, I sit here at my picnic table pecking away at this laptop.
I've kind of been in a funk today. Actually the funk has been building since yesterday. I think that it all started with not eating very good for the last couple of days. I've actually managed to eat reasonably healthy thus far on the trip. I've been doing a lot of Subway and ordering extra veggies. I have also been trying to eat a lot of fruit. Most importantly, I've been trying not to pig out on any one meal. Most of the trip that hasn't been a problem because I have been doing so much hiking that even when I ate large meals they were offset by the amount of activity that I did that day. Today was the first day of the whole trip were I was doing a solid day of riding for the second day in a row.
It all started with breakfast yesterday. I had just come off of my 13.5 miles of hiking the previous night and I was pretty hungry. I stopped in Forks, Washington and ordered a Country Skillet. The skillet probably had enough potatoes, country fried steak and gravy to feed a small country. I could have eaten just half of it and would have been pretty full. But for some reason I kept forcing myself to keep eating. I did leave the last couple of bites on the plate but the damage had already been done.
It was so late by the time that I was hungry for lunch that I decided to skip lunch and just wait until dinner. In my experience this is never a good idea because usually it means that I am so hungry by the time that dinner comes around that I make poor food choices. I'm not sure that a Turkey and Bacon Subway sandwich stacked with veggies counts as a poor food choice but the fact that I had a full 12 inch sandwich instead of my normal 6 inch just added to the mass of food that was festering in my stomach.
When I woke up this morning I was determined to have a light breakfast since I knew that I would have another full day of riding and not a whole lot of exercise. Unfortunately my choices in the small town of Seal Rock, Oregon were limited. After tossing my laundry in the washer at the laundromat I walked over to a little espresso stand (which seem to be everywhere in Washington and Oregon) and ordered a large coffee and piece of banana bread.
Similar to the effect that I experienced the previous day the light breakfast just meant that I was that much hungrier for lunch. I stopped at Wendy's in Roseburg, Oregon and got a Monterey Ranch Chicken Sandwich, a fruit cup and a broccoli and cheese baked potato.
Shortly after finishing lunch I was already hungry again. I think that this is the effect of not eating good food. My body was trying to tell me that it needed some substantial nutrition. By the time that dinner came around I was so hungry that I once again ignored what my body was trying to tell me and went with the easy route. I stopped at a chinese restaurant and had some garlic chicken, roast pork and chicken chow mein. The only vegetables in the whole plate were the little pieces of cabbage in the chow mein.
As I look back on the list of what I ate over the last day it really doesn't sound all that bad. I think that the real problem though isn't the food that is on the list of things that I ate, it's the food that's missing from that list. Part of my weight loss strategy has been to 'fill' myself up with good food so that I'm not as hungry for less healthy food. On an average day at home I eat a fairly substantial quantity of fresh fruits and vegetables. I feel that's what has been missing from my diet over the last couple of days. The fact that I have not been getting my normal amount of exercise may have also contributed to the funk.
Somehow I doubt that the description of my diet over the last couple days could possibly be interesting to anyone but myself (and that may even be debatable as I look back on this in a few days). But that is what was on my mind just now so that's what I wrote about.
Fortunately my dietary funk was not the only noteworthy experience today. I think that the most memorable experience of the day was watching some seals ride the surf off of Oregon coastline. When I planned this trip it didn't even occur to me that I might see ocean wildlife as I made the journey. I just thought that it would be a pretty ride. But so far I have seen starfish, anenome, seals and sea lions. It seems so strange to me to see all of these in the 'wild'. I've only ever seen seals and sea lions in an aquarium before today.
Another highlight of the day was stopping through Roseburg, Oregon where I was born nearly 29 years ago. I stopped to take a picture at the city's welcome sign. The sign was placed near a busy intersection where I'm sure that everybody was wondering what the hell I was doing propping up my camera on a pile of rocks to try and get myself into the picture via a timed photo. While in Roseburg I stopped for lunch at Wendy's (the only Wendy's in the whole state of Oregon as far as I could tell) and then camped out at a Comfort Inn parking lot to steal some free wireless internet access.
I was surprised that no one came out of the hotel to ask what the hell I was doing sitting in the middle of an empty parking lot pounding away on a laptop keyboard. I was hoping to get my journal entries posted onto my website but I discovered that my website has gone offline. So, I guess by the time that you (whoever you are) read this I will probably already be home. Lacking the ability to update my website I just emailed my sister Marci to let her know that I was still alive and then I packed up the laptop and moved on.
Other than the sidetrip to Roseburg (which was about a 150 mile detour) I spent the whole day on Hwy 101; otherwise known as the Pacific Coast Highway. Most people don't realize that the Pacific Coast Highway is only right on the coast for about a third of it's distance. A good portion of the time you are a mile or more inland and the remainder of the time you are close to the coast but can't really see the beach or the water. Even if you were only on the actual coast for one tenth of the distance it would still be a worthwhile ride. The scenery is breathtaking.
Since I ended up camping last night when I had originally planned to stay in a hotel I felt like I owed myself a night's stay in a hotel. I didn't have any immediate plans to stay in a hotel since I had managed to do my laundry, shower and connect to the internet today. However, I did nearly cash in that option tonight. When I crossed the border into California the fog had rolled in from the ocean and it was starting to get a little chilly. I was tired from riding all day and was thinking how nice it would feel to just plunk myself down into a hotel room without having to go through the trouble of setting up camp.
After eating dinner at the Chinese restaurant I stopped at the Penny Saver Inn to check on room prices. How could you go wrong with a name like “Penny Saver”? They wanted $60 for a night in the hotel. That's really not all that much but the place was a shit hole. It's the sort of place that I was expecting to pay 40 to 50 dollars. You know it's a real quality hotel when you have to check out the remote control for your room from the front desk. It tells you that their normal clientèle are the type of people that steal TV remotes. I just couldn't stomach the price and I decided to press on to a campground.
Ironically the campground prices were also pretty ridiculous. It's costing me $20 a night to stay in a California State Park campground (Redwood National Park is actually jointly managed by the Department of the Interior and the state of California). I only spent $10 a night at Olympic National Park. I suppose that the campsite is pretty nice and they do have showers in the campground.
I was expecting to self-register like I do at most National Park campgrounds, but was surprised to find a ranger manning the entrance station to the campground. The ranger was a younger female and was kind of pretty and very friendly. So friendly in fact that it almost seemed like she was flirting with me. So, I flirted back a little bit. I must have picked up the wrong vibe from her because when I started to flirt back she not-so-subtlety mentioned that today was her last day of summer before going back to high school tomorrow. Ick! I felt like a dirty old man. I swear that she looked like she was at least 24.
Day Eleven - The Oregon Coast
Saturday August 20th
It's funny how things just work out sometimes. As I went to bed last night I was debating whether or not I should stay an extra day in Olympic National Park. When I woke up this morning sore and stiff from yesterday's hiking I decided that it was time to pack it up and move on. I was already on Hwy 101 and it was pretty much a straight shot south for the next 1200 miles or so to San Diego. I was planning on staying somewhere in Oregon for the night. I figured that I would just pull up to some beach side motel and get a room for the night. As soon as I hit the Oregon coast I realized what a bad idea this was. Every beach that I passed was packed with people. Every hotel that I passed had a “No Vacancy” sign up. And then it hit me, getting a hotel room on the coast on a Saturday in the middle of August just wasn't going to happen.
My backup plan was to get a campsite somewhere. Even though I had been camping for the last 4 days another night camping didn't sound that bad. I wanted a shower and a place to do my laundry but I didn't really care whether or not those things came with a hotel room. It didn't take long to realize that even my backup plan was not very feasible. Not only were all of the motels full but, of course, so were all of the campgrounds.
I pulled out the map and decided to go with Plan C. Plan C involved taking a detour off of Hwy 101 and shooting out to the city of my birth, Roseburg, Oregon. I figured that if I got away from the beach that I shouldn't have any trouble finding a cheap hotel room. I also thought that it would be neat to spend a night in the town that I was born in and maybe even stop by the Harley dealership for a t-shirt.
Plan C was shaping up nicely until I realized that I wasn't traveling very fast along Hwy 101. Hwy 101 (the Pacific Coast Highway) is a old scenic stretch of highway that runs (mostly) along the coast from Washington to Oregon and passes through a bunch of coastal towns. The fastest posted speed limit is 60 MPH but more often than not you are going closer to 45 or 50 and every time that you pass through a town that drops down to 25 or so. I figured that at my current rate of travel that Plan C would optimistically drop me into Roseburg sometime around 10 PM.
Even though I hate riding at night Plan C was still my best option. I figured that I would just keep riding south until I got to Roseburg or ran into a better option. About 10 miles down the road from where I arrived at the aforementioned decision serendipity struck and I stumbled onto an RV campground. This wasn't the first time that an RV campground had spared me from riding into the wee hours of the morning looking for lodging (I ran into a similar ordeal at the Grand Canyon last year).
Although all of the official tent sites had already been taken, the owner was more than happy to let me pitch my tent on the lawn at the entrance of the park. I couldn't have asked for a better campsite (thus the opening line of this post). The beach and ocean are just across the highway less than a 100 yards away with nothing obstructing my view.
After I got my tent pitched I walked down to the beach and spent some time poking over the rocks in the low tide. The rocks were covered with starfish by the dozens. In the distance there were some seals basking on the rocks. A few minutes later the sun painted the sky orange and red as it tucked itself beneath the ocean. The whole beach experience was definitely the highlight of my day.
Prior to the beach experience I would have said that the highlight of the day was crossing the border from Washington to Oregon. Not that I was particularly happy to leave Washington or to arrive in Oregon, but the traversal of the state border entailed crossing a 3 mile bridge spanning the Columbia river as it dumps into the Pacific. It was a pretty extraordinary experience to ride on a bridge that long. I was tempted to pull over and take some pictures but unfortunately there was not a whole lot of room.
It's funny how things just work out sometimes. As I went to bed last night I was debating whether or not I should stay an extra day in Olympic National Park. When I woke up this morning sore and stiff from yesterday's hiking I decided that it was time to pack it up and move on. I was already on Hwy 101 and it was pretty much a straight shot south for the next 1200 miles or so to San Diego. I was planning on staying somewhere in Oregon for the night. I figured that I would just pull up to some beach side motel and get a room for the night. As soon as I hit the Oregon coast I realized what a bad idea this was. Every beach that I passed was packed with people. Every hotel that I passed had a “No Vacancy” sign up. And then it hit me, getting a hotel room on the coast on a Saturday in the middle of August just wasn't going to happen.
My backup plan was to get a campsite somewhere. Even though I had been camping for the last 4 days another night camping didn't sound that bad. I wanted a shower and a place to do my laundry but I didn't really care whether or not those things came with a hotel room. It didn't take long to realize that even my backup plan was not very feasible. Not only were all of the motels full but, of course, so were all of the campgrounds.
I pulled out the map and decided to go with Plan C. Plan C involved taking a detour off of Hwy 101 and shooting out to the city of my birth, Roseburg, Oregon. I figured that if I got away from the beach that I shouldn't have any trouble finding a cheap hotel room. I also thought that it would be neat to spend a night in the town that I was born in and maybe even stop by the Harley dealership for a t-shirt.
Plan C was shaping up nicely until I realized that I wasn't traveling very fast along Hwy 101. Hwy 101 (the Pacific Coast Highway) is a old scenic stretch of highway that runs (mostly) along the coast from Washington to Oregon and passes through a bunch of coastal towns. The fastest posted speed limit is 60 MPH but more often than not you are going closer to 45 or 50 and every time that you pass through a town that drops down to 25 or so. I figured that at my current rate of travel that Plan C would optimistically drop me into Roseburg sometime around 10 PM.
Even though I hate riding at night Plan C was still my best option. I figured that I would just keep riding south until I got to Roseburg or ran into a better option. About 10 miles down the road from where I arrived at the aforementioned decision serendipity struck and I stumbled onto an RV campground. This wasn't the first time that an RV campground had spared me from riding into the wee hours of the morning looking for lodging (I ran into a similar ordeal at the Grand Canyon last year).
Although all of the official tent sites had already been taken, the owner was more than happy to let me pitch my tent on the lawn at the entrance of the park. I couldn't have asked for a better campsite (thus the opening line of this post). The beach and ocean are just across the highway less than a 100 yards away with nothing obstructing my view.
After I got my tent pitched I walked down to the beach and spent some time poking over the rocks in the low tide. The rocks were covered with starfish by the dozens. In the distance there were some seals basking on the rocks. A few minutes later the sun painted the sky orange and red as it tucked itself beneath the ocean. The whole beach experience was definitely the highlight of my day.
Prior to the beach experience I would have said that the highlight of the day was crossing the border from Washington to Oregon. Not that I was particularly happy to leave Washington or to arrive in Oregon, but the traversal of the state border entailed crossing a 3 mile bridge spanning the Columbia river as it dumps into the Pacific. It was a pretty extraordinary experience to ride on a bridge that long. I was tempted to pull over and take some pictures but unfortunately there was not a whole lot of room.
Day Ten - Olympic National Park
Friday August 19th
I set a trip record yesterday (I am writing this on the following morning). I hiked 13.5 miles in Olympic National Park. I also managed to ride about 120 miles on the bike. It was a pretty full day. The previous record was set in Glacier National Park when Chris, Sean and I hiked the highline trail for a total of 12 miles.
The 13.5 miles was actually split up over 3 different trails. In the morning I hiked to Sol Duc falls by way of the Lover's Lane trail. Next I stopped by the Storm King ranger station and hiked the trail to Merrymere Falls. Finally I rode about 80 miles out to the coastal area of the park and hiked the Sand Point trail out to the Washington coastline. It was a really good day of hiking.
Although the ride out to the coastal area of the park took much longer than I had anticipated it was a very beautiful ride. Had I not done any hiking at all it still would have been a worthwhile trip. I rode along the Northern coast of Washington where I could see, smell and hear the ocean water. When I couldn't see the ocean I was riding through a corridor of cedar, fir and pine decorated with wildflowers of purple, pink, white and gold.
The trail to Sandpoint was interesting. It was 3 miles each way and nearly all of that 3 miles was covered with boardwalk. I'm sure that it was cool when it was originally constructed but yesterday it felt like I was hiking along the boardwalk of death. It was like you were playing Russian roulette. You never knew which board was going to snap in half with your next step. I did end up actually breaking one of the boards. Luckily I was only stepping on the board with my heel and I didn't go all the way through. The boardwalk was also fun in places where it was wet and covered with moss. On the way back I took a wrong step and nearly slid right off of the walkway.
As I got to the end of the trail you could start to see all of the fog rolling in off of the ocean and into the forest. For the last 50 yards or so of the hike there was a light drizzle as the passing clouds were scraped by the treetops. As soon as I got past the trees and onto the beach it stopped raining. I bet that it “rains” in those 50 yards of tree nearly 24 hours a day.
The beach was much different than I expected. It was foggy, rocky and piled up with dead wood that had washed ashore. I suppose that is how the early American explorers found most of the Northwestern beaches. I am just used to beaches with sunshine, warm clear water, and miles of sand. Even though I wouldn't describe the beach as pretty, it was still pretty cool to see.
I've seen some pretty interesting road signs in Washington. The first one that I noticed a couple of days ago and have seen just about everywhere since then is a sign than reads, “Motorcycles use extreme caution”. Although there is some humor in the fact that they are instructing the motorcycles and not the riders to use caution, the frequency with which the sign was used was more funny. There were spots that didn't seem to have any hazards at all that would have one of these signs up. In other spots there would be a small bump in the road and there would be a sign warning motorcycles to use extreme caution. I've probably seen 3 or 4 dozen of these signs driving through Washington. When they are that prevalent they begin to lose their meaning. They should just post one sign at every entrance to Washington warning bikers to extreme caution in the entire state.
Following the theme of over-caution with road signs, I saw another sign that read, “Warning: No Warning Signs Next 21 Miles”. They were so polite with their warning signs that they even warned you that there were no warning signs. Ironically, on the stretch of road that I rode yesterday, they were lying. Despite being warned that there would be no warning signs I was still warned to use extreme caution because I was on a motorcycle every couple of miles or so.
I set a trip record yesterday (I am writing this on the following morning). I hiked 13.5 miles in Olympic National Park. I also managed to ride about 120 miles on the bike. It was a pretty full day. The previous record was set in Glacier National Park when Chris, Sean and I hiked the highline trail for a total of 12 miles.
The 13.5 miles was actually split up over 3 different trails. In the morning I hiked to Sol Duc falls by way of the Lover's Lane trail. Next I stopped by the Storm King ranger station and hiked the trail to Merrymere Falls. Finally I rode about 80 miles out to the coastal area of the park and hiked the Sand Point trail out to the Washington coastline. It was a really good day of hiking.
Although the ride out to the coastal area of the park took much longer than I had anticipated it was a very beautiful ride. Had I not done any hiking at all it still would have been a worthwhile trip. I rode along the Northern coast of Washington where I could see, smell and hear the ocean water. When I couldn't see the ocean I was riding through a corridor of cedar, fir and pine decorated with wildflowers of purple, pink, white and gold.
The trail to Sandpoint was interesting. It was 3 miles each way and nearly all of that 3 miles was covered with boardwalk. I'm sure that it was cool when it was originally constructed but yesterday it felt like I was hiking along the boardwalk of death. It was like you were playing Russian roulette. You never knew which board was going to snap in half with your next step. I did end up actually breaking one of the boards. Luckily I was only stepping on the board with my heel and I didn't go all the way through. The boardwalk was also fun in places where it was wet and covered with moss. On the way back I took a wrong step and nearly slid right off of the walkway.
As I got to the end of the trail you could start to see all of the fog rolling in off of the ocean and into the forest. For the last 50 yards or so of the hike there was a light drizzle as the passing clouds were scraped by the treetops. As soon as I got past the trees and onto the beach it stopped raining. I bet that it “rains” in those 50 yards of tree nearly 24 hours a day.
The beach was much different than I expected. It was foggy, rocky and piled up with dead wood that had washed ashore. I suppose that is how the early American explorers found most of the Northwestern beaches. I am just used to beaches with sunshine, warm clear water, and miles of sand. Even though I wouldn't describe the beach as pretty, it was still pretty cool to see.
I've seen some pretty interesting road signs in Washington. The first one that I noticed a couple of days ago and have seen just about everywhere since then is a sign than reads, “Motorcycles use extreme caution”. Although there is some humor in the fact that they are instructing the motorcycles and not the riders to use caution, the frequency with which the sign was used was more funny. There were spots that didn't seem to have any hazards at all that would have one of these signs up. In other spots there would be a small bump in the road and there would be a sign warning motorcycles to use extreme caution. I've probably seen 3 or 4 dozen of these signs driving through Washington. When they are that prevalent they begin to lose their meaning. They should just post one sign at every entrance to Washington warning bikers to extreme caution in the entire state. Following the theme of over-caution with road signs, I saw another sign that read, “Warning: No Warning Signs Next 21 Miles”. They were so polite with their warning signs that they even warned you that there were no warning signs. Ironically, on the stretch of road that I rode yesterday, they were lying. Despite being warned that there would be no warning signs I was still warned to use extreme caution because I was on a motorcycle every couple of miles or so.
Day Nine - Lost In Seattle
Thursday August 18th
I have two words for the riding that I did today, “Spectacular!, Spectacular!”. The ride through Northwestern Washington was incredible. The weather was beautiful, the scenery was beautiful, everything was beautiful. Anacortes, Deception Pass, Mukilteo Ferry, Downtown Seattle, Tacoma, Hood Canal Bridge and Crescent Lake in Olympic National Park were all really cool.
The weather had cleared in North Cascades National Park by the time that I had woken up. The only problem was that the ground was still pretty wet and I was basically left to tear down camp in the mud. The tent was pretty dirty when I stuffed it back into the bag.
I had been basically eating either fruit that I had bought at a grocery store a couple of days earlier or gas station food (lunchables, beef jerky) for the last couple of days. So I decided that I was going to stop somewhere and have a good breakfast. I stopped just outside of Concrete, WA at the Cascade Mountain Restaurant. I was so hungry that I ordered Chicken Fried Steak, 3 eggs, wheat toast, hash browns, 2 pancakes and a glass of orange juice. I barely came up for air as I scarfed everything down. My stomach complained a little bit after I had stuffed it all in but I knew that I would be OK in a couple of hours.
It was really cool to get my first whiff of the ocean air as I came into Anacortes. I'm not sure if Anacortes is officially considered to be in the pacific ocean. It is really an island located in a channel between Washington and Vancouver, B.C. Either way it's water from the Pacific Ocean that fills that channel.
I made it to Anacortes much quicker than I expected to. It was deceptively quick. I was thinking that Anacortes was further along my planned route than it really was and it made me think that I had lots of time to spare. Actually I suppose that I might have had extra time if it wasn't for the detours that I ran into later in the day.
Deception Pass was really the highlight of the day. It is a really tall bridge connecting Anacortes to Whidbey Island. As I came up to the bridge the whole channel that the bridge crossed was engulfed in fog. I stopped on the other side of the bridge and took a short walk down to the beach for a better view and to stretch out my legs a little bit.
I took the ferry from Whidbey Island to Mukilteo just north of Seattle. There was a much quicker route to get to Olympic National Park but I wanted to stop in Seattle to get a T-Shirt from the Harley shop. I spent nearly 45 minutes wandering around downtown Seattle waiting for the big orange bar and shield to emerge somewhere on the horizon. After checking the map 3 times, I finally gave up and asked someone for directions. I found out that the downtown Harley shop was nothing more than a clothing store much like the one in Jackson Hole.
With better directions I was able to find the store pretty quickly but when I got there I was really disappointed in their t-shirt selection. I was also a little turned off by the idea of buying a shirt from a store that didn't actually sell Harley's. For some reason that didn't bother me in Jackson Hole. Maybe it's because most of the folks who stopped in Jackson Hole were actually riding Harley's whereas most of the people in downtown Seattle looked like they had never ridden a bike before and were just there to buy a t-shirt. After a couple of minutes of poking around I just decided to leave empty handed.
I was a little bummed out because the whole point of the detour through Seattle was for the t-shirt. I looked at the map and noticed that there were a couple of other dealers in the area. I didn't want to go out of my way to find them but I told myself that if I could see the shop from the freeway then I would stop for a shirt.
Lucky for me the Tacoma Harley dealership was visible from the freeway. It still took me a couple of minutes to actually figure out how to get to it, but I did eventually figure it out. They didn't have a whole lot of selection in my size but I eventually picked up a shirt that said, “Got Asphalt?”. I thought it was pretty amusing. Unfortunately the dealer design on the back of the shirt was pretty plain and boring. But at least it says, Destination Harley Davidson - Tacoma, WA” so I can prove that I was at least here.
After buying the t-shirt I took a look at the map to see how much further I had to go before heading west again towards Olympic National Park. To my dismay I had completely missed Hwy 305. On my original route I hadn't even planned on passing through Tacoma. There was an alternate route for getting back to where I needed to be but once again the whole ordeal probably put me another hour or so behind my original schedule.
After passing through some painful road construction northwest of Tacoma I finally made it onto Hwy 101 and on the road to Olympic National Park. The visitor information center in Port Angeles was closed by the time that I got there. I had planned on asking a ranger for suggestions for camping and hiking spots. Lacking a ranger I blindly picked a site off the map. Since it was already starting to get dark I chose a campsite that was a little closer (but still 20 miles away) and positioned me for some good hiking in the morning. Unfortunately when I made it to that campground it was already full. Fortunately there was another one just 2 miles down the road.
So that's where I am now, Fairholm campground in Olympic National Park located on the west bank of Crescent Lake. There are a lot of kids and mosquitoes in the campground and it's a little noisier than I am used to but all in all it's a pretty nice spot. Speaking of nice spots, I think I'm going to go find a nice spot in my tent and pass out for the night.
I have two words for the riding that I did today, “Spectacular!, Spectacular!”. The ride through Northwestern Washington was incredible. The weather was beautiful, the scenery was beautiful, everything was beautiful. Anacortes, Deception Pass, Mukilteo Ferry, Downtown Seattle, Tacoma, Hood Canal Bridge and Crescent Lake in Olympic National Park were all really cool.
The weather had cleared in North Cascades National Park by the time that I had woken up. The only problem was that the ground was still pretty wet and I was basically left to tear down camp in the mud. The tent was pretty dirty when I stuffed it back into the bag.
I had been basically eating either fruit that I had bought at a grocery store a couple of days earlier or gas station food (lunchables, beef jerky) for the last couple of days. So I decided that I was going to stop somewhere and have a good breakfast. I stopped just outside of Concrete, WA at the Cascade Mountain Restaurant. I was so hungry that I ordered Chicken Fried Steak, 3 eggs, wheat toast, hash browns, 2 pancakes and a glass of orange juice. I barely came up for air as I scarfed everything down. My stomach complained a little bit after I had stuffed it all in but I knew that I would be OK in a couple of hours.
It was really cool to get my first whiff of the ocean air as I came into Anacortes. I'm not sure if Anacortes is officially considered to be in the pacific ocean. It is really an island located in a channel between Washington and Vancouver, B.C. Either way it's water from the Pacific Ocean that fills that channel.
I made it to Anacortes much quicker than I expected to. It was deceptively quick. I was thinking that Anacortes was further along my planned route than it really was and it made me think that I had lots of time to spare. Actually I suppose that I might have had extra time if it wasn't for the detours that I ran into later in the day.
Deception Pass was really the highlight of the day. It is a really tall bridge connecting Anacortes to Whidbey Island. As I came up to the bridge the whole channel that the bridge crossed was engulfed in fog. I stopped on the other side of the bridge and took a short walk down to the beach for a better view and to stretch out my legs a little bit.
I took the ferry from Whidbey Island to Mukilteo just north of Seattle. There was a much quicker route to get to Olympic National Park but I wanted to stop in Seattle to get a T-Shirt from the Harley shop. I spent nearly 45 minutes wandering around downtown Seattle waiting for the big orange bar and shield to emerge somewhere on the horizon. After checking the map 3 times, I finally gave up and asked someone for directions. I found out that the downtown Harley shop was nothing more than a clothing store much like the one in Jackson Hole.
With better directions I was able to find the store pretty quickly but when I got there I was really disappointed in their t-shirt selection. I was also a little turned off by the idea of buying a shirt from a store that didn't actually sell Harley's. For some reason that didn't bother me in Jackson Hole. Maybe it's because most of the folks who stopped in Jackson Hole were actually riding Harley's whereas most of the people in downtown Seattle looked like they had never ridden a bike before and were just there to buy a t-shirt. After a couple of minutes of poking around I just decided to leave empty handed.
I was a little bummed out because the whole point of the detour through Seattle was for the t-shirt. I looked at the map and noticed that there were a couple of other dealers in the area. I didn't want to go out of my way to find them but I told myself that if I could see the shop from the freeway then I would stop for a shirt.
Lucky for me the Tacoma Harley dealership was visible from the freeway. It still took me a couple of minutes to actually figure out how to get to it, but I did eventually figure it out. They didn't have a whole lot of selection in my size but I eventually picked up a shirt that said, “Got Asphalt?”. I thought it was pretty amusing. Unfortunately the dealer design on the back of the shirt was pretty plain and boring. But at least it says, Destination Harley Davidson - Tacoma, WA” so I can prove that I was at least here.
After buying the t-shirt I took a look at the map to see how much further I had to go before heading west again towards Olympic National Park. To my dismay I had completely missed Hwy 305. On my original route I hadn't even planned on passing through Tacoma. There was an alternate route for getting back to where I needed to be but once again the whole ordeal probably put me another hour or so behind my original schedule.
After passing through some painful road construction northwest of Tacoma I finally made it onto Hwy 101 and on the road to Olympic National Park. The visitor information center in Port Angeles was closed by the time that I got there. I had planned on asking a ranger for suggestions for camping and hiking spots. Lacking a ranger I blindly picked a site off the map. Since it was already starting to get dark I chose a campsite that was a little closer (but still 20 miles away) and positioned me for some good hiking in the morning. Unfortunately when I made it to that campground it was already full. Fortunately there was another one just 2 miles down the road.
So that's where I am now, Fairholm campground in Olympic National Park located on the west bank of Crescent Lake. There are a lot of kids and mosquitoes in the campground and it's a little noisier than I am used to but all in all it's a pretty nice spot. Speaking of nice spots, I think I'm going to go find a nice spot in my tent and pass out for the night.
Day Eight - Hiking in the Cascades
Wednesday August 17th
North Cascades national park is an interesting park. What looks like a single park on a map is actually two halves of a national park and two national recreation areas managed as a single unit. The primary route into the park complex is on Washington Hwy 20 which runs through Ross Lake National Recreation area. Ross Lake NRA actually splits the North Cascades national park into two pieces.
There is only a single road which will actually take you into North Cascades National Park. It is a winding 25 mile winding dirt and gravel road. I know this firsthand because I rode my Harley down it and barely survived to tell the tale. Most of the park is only accessible via backpacking trails.
The scenery in the park is beautiful. Granite and marble mountains carpeted in pine, fir, cedar and hemlock. A ranger last night mentioned that the park nearly qualifies as a rainforest. Everything is incredibly green and covered in moss.
The downside of camping in and biking through a nearly-rainforest is that you are bound to get wet. I was expecting a little bit of moisture because I had checked the weather forecast from Coeur D'Alene. There was supposed to be a small chance of morning showers but everything was supposed to clear up by the afternoon.
Well there were definitely morning showers, but the weather didn't clear up until well into the evening. It never really rained all that hard; most of the time it was little more than a drizzle. The clouds were so low coming through the mountains it's almost as if it weren't really raining but you were just feeling the moisture from being amongst the clouds. I felt like I got a good taste of genuine Washington weather (although I was assured by several people that it is usually very dry in Washington in August).
The moisture didn't keep me from hiking. I hiked nearly 8 miles yesterday across two different trails. The first trail was just across the street from my campground and took me up to a view point of Diablo Lake. The second trail took me through several miles of mossy forest to a hidden lake called pyramid lake. The lake was really more of a pond than a lake but it was still pretty cool.
Ironically I was able to stay dry all morning until I started hiking. My rain gear kept me pretty dry on the bike. However, once I got on the trail my jeans just sucked all of the water off of the surrounding plants as I walked by. By the time that I made it to pyramid lake my jeans were soaking wet and my shoes were sloshing. It was fun :)
The pyramid lake hike was the first of two times that I got soaking wet yesterday. After the hike I headed into two to find some food, gas and firewood. As I was riding around I actually managed to dry out my jeans but my boots were a little more stubborn. Before returning to camp for the night I decided to ride the Cascade River Road into the official North Cascades National Park. I got about 25 miles down the road before it started raining again. I didn't even bother putting on my rain gear bottoms this time. I still damp from earlier in the day and figured that it wouldn't matter all that much. I was already planning on changing into dry clothes once I got back to camp. I was more concerned about the firewood that I had just bought getting wet.
Despite the wet firewood I was able to start a fire last night. I would be pretty proud of that if it weren't for the fact that I had to burn nearly half a ream of paper to get the wood to finally dry out and catch fire. I almost gave up several times. But the thought of leaving my campsite with unburned firewood in the firepit was just too much for me to bear.
Both nights that I've been here there has been a ranger program in a little amphitheater in the campground. It's actually a pretty high tech setup with a large projection screen hooked up to a computer running a powerpoint presentation. Normally I would complain about the use of technology in a campground, but considering that I am sitting and typing on my laptop right now I'm not sure that I have the right to complain.
The program the first night was on Wolves. This is of particular interest to me since I just had a conversation/debate about this a week ago with one of my co-workers. The park ranger tried his damnedest to show how cute and cuddly the wolf was while leaving out all the parts about it being a cold blooded killer. I felt very propagandized by the time that he was done. It wasn't even very good propaganda, his presentation was full of logical fallacies. For instance, to prove how safe wolves are he started the presentation by telling everyone that there had only been one wolf attack on humans in the last 100 years (last year in British Columbia). I pointed out that the wolf population had been hunted to near extinction in the last hundred years and therefore was unlikely to even encounter humans much less attack. The ranger just kind of ignored me and pressed on. I'm not saying that wolves can't be cute and cuddly or that they deserve to be exterminated, but I think that it's irresponsible to ignore the fact that wolves can be quite dangerous.
The second night the program was on bears. There was actually quite a bit of useful information in this presentation. Most interesting I thought was how research was being done on how bears hibernate to help understand and correct human health problems. There are several fascinating things about how bears hibernate. First, most animals that hibernate totally shut their bodes down and bring their body temperature to just a couple of degrees above ambient temperature. Bears on the other hand only drop their body temperature about 10 degrees. Bear kidneys switch into an alternate mode when they are hibernating and recycle all of the waste that comes through them. Bears do not eat, urinate or defecate while they are hibernating yet they are still able to grow muscle. Humans on the other hand will start to break down muscle tissues after just a couple of days of inactivity.
The only thing that bothered me about the bear presentation was dual attitude that the ranger seemed to have. On the one hand he was telling everyone how dangerous bears were and that you should never leave out food because it would attract bears. On the other hand, when I asked him why the park didn't have bear boxes in the campgrounds like most other national parks, he just kind of danced around it and said that most people just store food in their cars. A lot of good that does for people like me who ride in on motorcycles, bicycles or hike into the park.
North Cascades national park is an interesting park. What looks like a single park on a map is actually two halves of a national park and two national recreation areas managed as a single unit. The primary route into the park complex is on Washington Hwy 20 which runs through Ross Lake National Recreation area. Ross Lake NRA actually splits the North Cascades national park into two pieces.
There is only a single road which will actually take you into North Cascades National Park. It is a winding 25 mile winding dirt and gravel road. I know this firsthand because I rode my Harley down it and barely survived to tell the tale. Most of the park is only accessible via backpacking trails.
The scenery in the park is beautiful. Granite and marble mountains carpeted in pine, fir, cedar and hemlock. A ranger last night mentioned that the park nearly qualifies as a rainforest. Everything is incredibly green and covered in moss.
The downside of camping in and biking through a nearly-rainforest is that you are bound to get wet. I was expecting a little bit of moisture because I had checked the weather forecast from Coeur D'Alene. There was supposed to be a small chance of morning showers but everything was supposed to clear up by the afternoon.
Well there were definitely morning showers, but the weather didn't clear up until well into the evening. It never really rained all that hard; most of the time it was little more than a drizzle. The clouds were so low coming through the mountains it's almost as if it weren't really raining but you were just feeling the moisture from being amongst the clouds. I felt like I got a good taste of genuine Washington weather (although I was assured by several people that it is usually very dry in Washington in August).
The moisture didn't keep me from hiking. I hiked nearly 8 miles yesterday across two different trails. The first trail was just across the street from my campground and took me up to a view point of Diablo Lake. The second trail took me through several miles of mossy forest to a hidden lake called pyramid lake. The lake was really more of a pond than a lake but it was still pretty cool.
Ironically I was able to stay dry all morning until I started hiking. My rain gear kept me pretty dry on the bike. However, once I got on the trail my jeans just sucked all of the water off of the surrounding plants as I walked by. By the time that I made it to pyramid lake my jeans were soaking wet and my shoes were sloshing. It was fun :)
The pyramid lake hike was the first of two times that I got soaking wet yesterday. After the hike I headed into two to find some food, gas and firewood. As I was riding around I actually managed to dry out my jeans but my boots were a little more stubborn. Before returning to camp for the night I decided to ride the Cascade River Road into the official North Cascades National Park. I got about 25 miles down the road before it started raining again. I didn't even bother putting on my rain gear bottoms this time. I still damp from earlier in the day and figured that it wouldn't matter all that much. I was already planning on changing into dry clothes once I got back to camp. I was more concerned about the firewood that I had just bought getting wet.
Despite the wet firewood I was able to start a fire last night. I would be pretty proud of that if it weren't for the fact that I had to burn nearly half a ream of paper to get the wood to finally dry out and catch fire. I almost gave up several times. But the thought of leaving my campsite with unburned firewood in the firepit was just too much for me to bear.
Both nights that I've been here there has been a ranger program in a little amphitheater in the campground. It's actually a pretty high tech setup with a large projection screen hooked up to a computer running a powerpoint presentation. Normally I would complain about the use of technology in a campground, but considering that I am sitting and typing on my laptop right now I'm not sure that I have the right to complain.
The program the first night was on Wolves. This is of particular interest to me since I just had a conversation/debate about this a week ago with one of my co-workers. The park ranger tried his damnedest to show how cute and cuddly the wolf was while leaving out all the parts about it being a cold blooded killer. I felt very propagandized by the time that he was done. It wasn't even very good propaganda, his presentation was full of logical fallacies. For instance, to prove how safe wolves are he started the presentation by telling everyone that there had only been one wolf attack on humans in the last 100 years (last year in British Columbia). I pointed out that the wolf population had been hunted to near extinction in the last hundred years and therefore was unlikely to even encounter humans much less attack. The ranger just kind of ignored me and pressed on. I'm not saying that wolves can't be cute and cuddly or that they deserve to be exterminated, but I think that it's irresponsible to ignore the fact that wolves can be quite dangerous.
The second night the program was on bears. There was actually quite a bit of useful information in this presentation. Most interesting I thought was how research was being done on how bears hibernate to help understand and correct human health problems. There are several fascinating things about how bears hibernate. First, most animals that hibernate totally shut their bodes down and bring their body temperature to just a couple of degrees above ambient temperature. Bears on the other hand only drop their body temperature about 10 degrees. Bear kidneys switch into an alternate mode when they are hibernating and recycle all of the waste that comes through them. Bears do not eat, urinate or defecate while they are hibernating yet they are still able to grow muscle. Humans on the other hand will start to break down muscle tissues after just a couple of days of inactivity.
The only thing that bothered me about the bear presentation was dual attitude that the ranger seemed to have. On the one hand he was telling everyone how dangerous bears were and that you should never leave out food because it would attract bears. On the other hand, when I asked him why the park didn't have bear boxes in the campgrounds like most other national parks, he just kind of danced around it and said that most people just store food in their cars. A lot of good that does for people like me who ride in on motorcycles, bicycles or hike into the park.
Day Seven - North Cascades
Tuesday August 16th
I am probably the only camper in all of North Cascades National Park right now that is sitting at the picnic table in their campsite typing on a laptop. I wasn't able to pick up wood for a fire tonight so I need to keep myself entertained somehow.
The campsite is beautiful; it's kind of tucked into alcove beneath a canopy of trees. The only problem is that the campsite doesn't provide bear boxes for food storage. I have a couple of apples and some bananas that I have wrapped in several layers of plastic and stored in my leather saddlebags for the night. We'll see if my saddlebags are still in tact tomorrow morning.
Today was my first day of riding on this trip that the weather was really nice. It wasn't too bad on Monday as I was leaving Glacier but it was still a little bit chilly. Today it was actually warm enough that I could ride without a jacket. Well, at least until I got back up into the mountains.
I got a late start riding this morning. I was out late last night and didn't even get up until 8 in the morning. That's the problem with staying in a hotel room; the sun has a tough time finding it's way into the room to wake me up in the morning. I never have that problem in a tent. As soon as the sun is out, I'm awake.
Yesterday was kind of a day of indulgence anyway. So, I didn't beat myself up too bad about sleeping in. To make sure that I got an even later start to the day I decided to do some extra laundry this morning before leaving. I washed most everything yesterday except for my shorts and one of my white t-shirts that I wore while washing all of my other clothes. I figured that it would be nice to leave Coeur D'Alene with all of my clothes clean so I went ahead and washed the shorts as well as the clothes that I wore last night.
While the clothes were in the dryer I headed out to breakfast. Like I said, my time in Coeur D'Alene was all about indulgence. I went online and found that there was a Perkins in the area. God I miss Perkins. Their eggs benedict and Mammoth Muffins are the best.
By the time that I got back to the hotel, got my clothes out of the dryer and got everything packed up it was nearly eleven o'clock. I don't think that I have ever before left that late for a day of riding. I only had about 350 miles to ride to North Cascades but I was riding on roads that I had never been on before. The ride seemed to take longer than I expected. There were a lot of winding mountain roads that I needed to continually slow down for. Oh, and there was that 45 minute “scenic drive” down a dirt and gravel road.
The ride between Coeur D'Alene and Kettle Falls was unspectacular. Not that it was ugly, it was just nothing special. I have been struck with the impression when riding through Northern Idaho that it would be really beautiful if it weren't for all the evidence of heavy logging that has occurred in the area. Even in the areas that are starting to grow back it is still evident that something is not quite right as you drive by.
Most of the ride between Kettle Falls and Tonasket was in National Forest and was pretty nice as was the scenic ride into North Cascades National Park. The stretch of Hwy 20 between those two spots though was almost as if I was riding in a different state. For about 80 miles I switched from riding through densely forested mountains to dry and desolate hills painted with sparse sagebrush. It actually reminded me of riding through some spots in Utah and Southern Idaho.
I am probably the only camper in all of North Cascades National Park right now that is sitting at the picnic table in their campsite typing on a laptop. I wasn't able to pick up wood for a fire tonight so I need to keep myself entertained somehow.
The campsite is beautiful; it's kind of tucked into alcove beneath a canopy of trees. The only problem is that the campsite doesn't provide bear boxes for food storage. I have a couple of apples and some bananas that I have wrapped in several layers of plastic and stored in my leather saddlebags for the night. We'll see if my saddlebags are still in tact tomorrow morning.
Today was my first day of riding on this trip that the weather was really nice. It wasn't too bad on Monday as I was leaving Glacier but it was still a little bit chilly. Today it was actually warm enough that I could ride without a jacket. Well, at least until I got back up into the mountains.
I got a late start riding this morning. I was out late last night and didn't even get up until 8 in the morning. That's the problem with staying in a hotel room; the sun has a tough time finding it's way into the room to wake me up in the morning. I never have that problem in a tent. As soon as the sun is out, I'm awake.
Yesterday was kind of a day of indulgence anyway. So, I didn't beat myself up too bad about sleeping in. To make sure that I got an even later start to the day I decided to do some extra laundry this morning before leaving. I washed most everything yesterday except for my shorts and one of my white t-shirts that I wore while washing all of my other clothes. I figured that it would be nice to leave Coeur D'Alene with all of my clothes clean so I went ahead and washed the shorts as well as the clothes that I wore last night.
While the clothes were in the dryer I headed out to breakfast. Like I said, my time in Coeur D'Alene was all about indulgence. I went online and found that there was a Perkins in the area. God I miss Perkins. Their eggs benedict and Mammoth Muffins are the best.
By the time that I got back to the hotel, got my clothes out of the dryer and got everything packed up it was nearly eleven o'clock. I don't think that I have ever before left that late for a day of riding. I only had about 350 miles to ride to North Cascades but I was riding on roads that I had never been on before. The ride seemed to take longer than I expected. There were a lot of winding mountain roads that I needed to continually slow down for. Oh, and there was that 45 minute “scenic drive” down a dirt and gravel road.
The ride between Coeur D'Alene and Kettle Falls was unspectacular. Not that it was ugly, it was just nothing special. I have been struck with the impression when riding through Northern Idaho that it would be really beautiful if it weren't for all the evidence of heavy logging that has occurred in the area. Even in the areas that are starting to grow back it is still evident that something is not quite right as you drive by.
Most of the ride between Kettle Falls and Tonasket was in National Forest and was pretty nice as was the scenic ride into North Cascades National Park. The stretch of Hwy 20 between those two spots though was almost as if I was riding in a different state. For about 80 miles I switched from riding through densely forested mountains to dry and desolate hills painted with sparse sagebrush. It actually reminded me of riding through some spots in Utah and Southern Idaho.
Monday, August 15, 2005
Where are the Glacier Pictures?
The upload speed on the wireless network here in the hotel really sucks. Because it sucks so bad I may not be able to get all of the pictures on the website before I leave tomorrow. You can see whatever has already been uploaded here.
Day Six - Wrapping Up
Monday August 15th (today)
We woke up this morning still stuffed from our feast the night before. We had planned enough fajitas to feed 5 and yet there were only 3 of us to eat them. We each did our part to make sure that there were as little leftovers as possible... it was a dirty job but somebody had to do it. We were faced with the same task the next morning. A heavy breakfast didn't really sound all that good, but it was the only food that we had. So we made yet another feast of a breakfast consisting of bacon, eggs, and a whole cantaloupe. Yummy!
After tearing down camp we headed to the Apgar Visitor's center to pick up a gift for Chris's mother-in-law who had so kindly packed all of the cooking gear that we had relied on so heavily all weekend. We took our last picture in front of the Glacier National Park sign at the West Entrance to the park and then headed our separate ways. They were headed east back to Wisconsin and I was headed West to Coeur d'Alene for the night and eventually out to the Pacific Coast.
After a short day of riding I made it to Post Falls, ID where I am currently sitting inside my hotel room at the Riverside Inn typing this. I've showered for the first time in nearly 5 days, done all of my laundry and am looking forward to a night out on the town and a soft warm bed tonight before heading back out tomorrow to do some more camping and hiking.
We woke up this morning still stuffed from our feast the night before. We had planned enough fajitas to feed 5 and yet there were only 3 of us to eat them. We each did our part to make sure that there were as little leftovers as possible... it was a dirty job but somebody had to do it. We were faced with the same task the next morning. A heavy breakfast didn't really sound all that good, but it was the only food that we had. So we made yet another feast of a breakfast consisting of bacon, eggs, and a whole cantaloupe. Yummy!
After tearing down camp we headed to the Apgar Visitor's center to pick up a gift for Chris's mother-in-law who had so kindly packed all of the cooking gear that we had relied on so heavily all weekend. We took our last picture in front of the Glacier National Park sign at the West Entrance to the park and then headed our separate ways. They were headed east back to Wisconsin and I was headed West to Coeur d'Alene for the night and eventually out to the Pacific Coast.
After a short day of riding I made it to Post Falls, ID where I am currently sitting inside my hotel room at the Riverside Inn typing this. I've showered for the first time in nearly 5 days, done all of my laundry and am looking forward to a night out on the town and a soft warm bed tonight before heading back out tomorrow to do some more camping and hiking.
Day Five - Waterton Lakes
Sunday August 14th
Chris, Sean and I woke up on Sunday morning pretty sore and stiff from the previous days hike. Our original plan had been to do some hiking in the Many Glacier area of the park. The hike that we had picked out was an 8 mile hike with significant elevation gain. In our current state none of us really felt like exerting ourselves that much anymore. So, we shifted to Plan B (which was the original Plan A) and decided to cross the border into Canada to check out the Canadian side of the park.
After having breakfast in St. Mary, we ventured across the border to Canada. A boat took us from the Canadian side of Waterton Lake to the U.S. side of Waterton Lake at Goat Haunt. It was kind of interesting to have to go back through U.S. Customs (a park ranger doubling as a customs agent) before going hiking at Goat Haunt. We chose a 5.6 mile round trip hike back to Kootenai Lake where we managed to see a bull and a cow moose.
It was nearly 10 o'clock by the time that we made it back to our campsite from Waterton Lake and we were all starving. By this time we had managed to nail down our cooking routine and were operating like a well oiled machine. Neither the fact that it was already dark or that we were attempting a fairly complex dinner by camping standards slowed us down. Chris lit the fire and cooked the bacon. Sean cooked some chicken breast on our gas grill. I chopped and sauteed some onions and bell peppers over the fire. When we were all done we mixed everything together to make the best damn bacon, chicken fajitas that any of us had ever had in our lives. We warmed the tortillas up right over the open fire. It was awesome.
Chris, Sean and I woke up on Sunday morning pretty sore and stiff from the previous days hike. Our original plan had been to do some hiking in the Many Glacier area of the park. The hike that we had picked out was an 8 mile hike with significant elevation gain. In our current state none of us really felt like exerting ourselves that much anymore. So, we shifted to Plan B (which was the original Plan A) and decided to cross the border into Canada to check out the Canadian side of the park.
After having breakfast in St. Mary, we ventured across the border to Canada. A boat took us from the Canadian side of Waterton Lake to the U.S. side of Waterton Lake at Goat Haunt. It was kind of interesting to have to go back through U.S. Customs (a park ranger doubling as a customs agent) before going hiking at Goat Haunt. We chose a 5.6 mile round trip hike back to Kootenai Lake where we managed to see a bull and a cow moose.
It was nearly 10 o'clock by the time that we made it back to our campsite from Waterton Lake and we were all starving. By this time we had managed to nail down our cooking routine and were operating like a well oiled machine. Neither the fact that it was already dark or that we were attempting a fairly complex dinner by camping standards slowed us down. Chris lit the fire and cooked the bacon. Sean cooked some chicken breast on our gas grill. I chopped and sauteed some onions and bell peppers over the fire. When we were all done we mixed everything together to make the best damn bacon, chicken fajitas that any of us had ever had in our lives. We warmed the tortillas up right over the open fire. It was awesome.
Day Four - The Highline Trail
Saturday, August 13th
We all woke on Saturday hoping to see Owen and Kim's busted up minivan parked in the campsite that we had reserved for them. Unfortunately they were still nowhere to be found. Since we couldn't get cell phone reception anywhere in the park, Chris drove out to a pay phone where he could call them and see what was up.
We figured that they had just gotten tired and decided to drive the rest of the way in the morning. We had planned a long hike for the day that required that we get an early start on the trail. If they didn't show up soon we were going to have to either leave without them or cancel the hike. Chris returned from the pay phone unsuccessful. Apparently Kim had turned her cellphone off. Just as we were about to give up on them and go hiking, the campground host stopped by and let us know that Kim and Owen had called park headquarters. They had experienced car trouble the night before and had stayed the night Kalispell.
We decided that we should at least head back into town to give them a call, even though it meant that we lose even more time from our hike. We discovered that the car was in the shop and that Owen was waiting to find out how bad the damage was. When we discovered that there was little to be done about the situation other than to wait for the verdict from the mechanic, we decided to head out on our hike. We all felt a little bad about leaving Owen stranded in Kalispell but a) there was nothing that we could at the moment, b) Owen was a big boy and could handle his own problems, and c) we didn't see any reason to ruin all of our vacation plans just because Owen had run into a stroke of bad luck (if you can call car trouble on a busted up old minivan bad luck rather than just plain inevitable).
So, temporarily putting Owen's troubles out of our mind we embarked upon the Highline Trail. There are several ways to hike the trail with varying lengths. We chose a path than ran 12 miles from Logan pass down to “The Loop” trailhead on the Going to the Sun Road. The hike was gorgeous. We started out by walking on a ledge carved into the mountain side a couple of hundred feet above the Going to the Sun Road. Along this path we ran into a mountain goat who decided that it wanted to share the trail with us. After a couple of minutes we were finally able to scare the goat back off the trail and got this picture which we dubbed, “The Holy Goat”.
We actually saw quite a bit of wildlife over the course of the trail. We saw some bighorn sheep, deer, more mountain goats, squirrels, a rabbit (dead and being eaten by the squirrels) and even a ptarmigan (which is apparently something like a wild chicken). Equally spectacular were the wildflowers. Someday I hope to be able to name them all but for now we just have the pictures.
The first leg of the trail terminated at an old Chalet. The Chalet is currently used for hikers that are hiking into the back country and want a place to stay overnight. We stopped there for lunch (turkey, bacon and cheese sandwiches) and to rest up for a bit before heading down the final 4 miles of descent back to “The Loop”. The return trail descended 2000+ feet over 4 miles; nearly a 10% grade. I think that each of our knees were about to explode by the time that we finally made it back to the parking lot.
We had a surprise visitor when we got back to the campsite. No, it wasn't Kim and Owen. One of my co-workers, Rand, coincidentally happened to be staying in the park this weekend. Apparently Owen knew that Rand was going to be here and let him know where we were going to be staying. Rand stayed for dinner (beer, brats, burgers) and for some of the campfire.
We learned later that night that Owen had gotten his car repaired earlier that afternoon and had already started back to Utah. By the time that he gets home he will have driven 1400 miles just to say that he made it 30 miles from the park without bothering to venture in or meet up with his friends. I'll never understand Owen. On top of missing out on an incredible weekend of camping and hiking, he kind of screwed us over by not bringing up some camping gear that we were expecting and because we had already bought food to cook for 5 people.
We all woke on Saturday hoping to see Owen and Kim's busted up minivan parked in the campsite that we had reserved for them. Unfortunately they were still nowhere to be found. Since we couldn't get cell phone reception anywhere in the park, Chris drove out to a pay phone where he could call them and see what was up.
We figured that they had just gotten tired and decided to drive the rest of the way in the morning. We had planned a long hike for the day that required that we get an early start on the trail. If they didn't show up soon we were going to have to either leave without them or cancel the hike. Chris returned from the pay phone unsuccessful. Apparently Kim had turned her cellphone off. Just as we were about to give up on them and go hiking, the campground host stopped by and let us know that Kim and Owen had called park headquarters. They had experienced car trouble the night before and had stayed the night Kalispell.
We decided that we should at least head back into town to give them a call, even though it meant that we lose even more time from our hike. We discovered that the car was in the shop and that Owen was waiting to find out how bad the damage was. When we discovered that there was little to be done about the situation other than to wait for the verdict from the mechanic, we decided to head out on our hike. We all felt a little bad about leaving Owen stranded in Kalispell but a) there was nothing that we could at the moment, b) Owen was a big boy and could handle his own problems, and c) we didn't see any reason to ruin all of our vacation plans just because Owen had run into a stroke of bad luck (if you can call car trouble on a busted up old minivan bad luck rather than just plain inevitable).
So, temporarily putting Owen's troubles out of our mind we embarked upon the Highline Trail. There are several ways to hike the trail with varying lengths. We chose a path than ran 12 miles from Logan pass down to “The Loop” trailhead on the Going to the Sun Road. The hike was gorgeous. We started out by walking on a ledge carved into the mountain side a couple of hundred feet above the Going to the Sun Road. Along this path we ran into a mountain goat who decided that it wanted to share the trail with us. After a couple of minutes we were finally able to scare the goat back off the trail and got this picture which we dubbed, “The Holy Goat”.
We actually saw quite a bit of wildlife over the course of the trail. We saw some bighorn sheep, deer, more mountain goats, squirrels, a rabbit (dead and being eaten by the squirrels) and even a ptarmigan (which is apparently something like a wild chicken). Equally spectacular were the wildflowers. Someday I hope to be able to name them all but for now we just have the pictures.
The first leg of the trail terminated at an old Chalet. The Chalet is currently used for hikers that are hiking into the back country and want a place to stay overnight. We stopped there for lunch (turkey, bacon and cheese sandwiches) and to rest up for a bit before heading down the final 4 miles of descent back to “The Loop”. The return trail descended 2000+ feet over 4 miles; nearly a 10% grade. I think that each of our knees were about to explode by the time that we finally made it back to the parking lot.
We had a surprise visitor when we got back to the campsite. No, it wasn't Kim and Owen. One of my co-workers, Rand, coincidentally happened to be staying in the park this weekend. Apparently Owen knew that Rand was going to be here and let him know where we were going to be staying. Rand stayed for dinner (beer, brats, burgers) and for some of the campfire.
We learned later that night that Owen had gotten his car repaired earlier that afternoon and had already started back to Utah. By the time that he gets home he will have driven 1400 miles just to say that he made it 30 miles from the park without bothering to venture in or meet up with his friends. I'll never understand Owen. On top of missing out on an incredible weekend of camping and hiking, he kind of screwed us over by not bringing up some camping gear that we were expecting and because we had already bought food to cook for 5 people.
Day Three - Where's Owen?
Friday, August 12th
Although the rain had stopped overnight and spared the tent, I was awakened on Friday morning by the sound of raindrops. I was starting to get a little discouraged. It was cold, wet (the tent had leaked a little over night) and it was starting to look like it might be that way for the whole weekend. But I tried not to let the rain get me down. I eventually mustered up the courage to leave the shelter of my tent and discovered that the rain had actually sounded much worse than it really was. It was barely drizzling.
By some miracle we were able to build a campfire with our firewood that had been left out in the rain all night. We cooked our first meal of cantaloupe, bacon, eggs and toast over the campfire on a cast iron skillet. It was something that we would get progressively better at with each meal that we cooked. That first meal, albeit delicious, was not much to look at. The eggs couldn't decide whether or not they were fried or scrambled. It was little more than a yellow, white and black amorphous mess.
After tearing down and packing up our waterlogged campground, we headed west on the Going To The Sun Road over Logan's pass. I was decked out in full rain gear. It wasn't raining very hard anymore but there was still a lot of water on the road and the temperature was probably in the low 40's. Our original plan was to do some hiking at Logan's Pass before snatching up our campsite for the next three days at Avalanche Campground. Unfortunately, it was so cold, wet and foggy up at the pass that a ranger dissuaded us from hiking. He suggested instead that we do some hiking in the more densely forested (i.e. Rainproof) areas on the west side of the park.
Our first real hike in the park was to Avalanche Lake. It was a gorgeous 4 mile roundtrip hike through an old-growth forest that started right from our campground and ended at a lake in a glacial valley that was fed by 4 waterfalls.
After we got back from the hike we decided that it was time to head into town to pick up supplies for the next couple of days. We needed to get firewood to last for 6 fires and food to last 5 people for the next 8 meals. It was a tight fit getting that much food and firewood into the car, but in the end we emerged victorious.
While we were in town we decided to call Kim and Owen to figure out when they would be gettting to the park. Earlier in the day we had placed bets on when they would make. It was a 700 mile drive and if they had left at a reasonable time in the morning (6am), they should have been at Glacier sometime around 6pm. I guessed that they would make it by 8pm, Chris guessed 10:45pm and Sean guessed that for one reason or another that they wouldn't show at all. When we got ahold of them at about quarter to 5 they were in Butte, MT about 5 hours from the park. It looked like Chris was going to win the bet.
Despite all being tired from a long and hard day of playing, we all decided to stay up until Kim and Owen showed up at the campground. We burned through a whole bundle of firewood as we sat around and shot the shit around the fire. When the first bundle was gone, we were all tired, but decided to persevere. We burned through an entire second bundle of firewood before finally calling it quits sometime around midnight.
Although the rain had stopped overnight and spared the tent, I was awakened on Friday morning by the sound of raindrops. I was starting to get a little discouraged. It was cold, wet (the tent had leaked a little over night) and it was starting to look like it might be that way for the whole weekend. But I tried not to let the rain get me down. I eventually mustered up the courage to leave the shelter of my tent and discovered that the rain had actually sounded much worse than it really was. It was barely drizzling.
By some miracle we were able to build a campfire with our firewood that had been left out in the rain all night. We cooked our first meal of cantaloupe, bacon, eggs and toast over the campfire on a cast iron skillet. It was something that we would get progressively better at with each meal that we cooked. That first meal, albeit delicious, was not much to look at. The eggs couldn't decide whether or not they were fried or scrambled. It was little more than a yellow, white and black amorphous mess.
After tearing down and packing up our waterlogged campground, we headed west on the Going To The Sun Road over Logan's pass. I was decked out in full rain gear. It wasn't raining very hard anymore but there was still a lot of water on the road and the temperature was probably in the low 40's. Our original plan was to do some hiking at Logan's Pass before snatching up our campsite for the next three days at Avalanche Campground. Unfortunately, it was so cold, wet and foggy up at the pass that a ranger dissuaded us from hiking. He suggested instead that we do some hiking in the more densely forested (i.e. Rainproof) areas on the west side of the park.
Our first real hike in the park was to Avalanche Lake. It was a gorgeous 4 mile roundtrip hike through an old-growth forest that started right from our campground and ended at a lake in a glacial valley that was fed by 4 waterfalls.
After we got back from the hike we decided that it was time to head into town to pick up supplies for the next couple of days. We needed to get firewood to last for 6 fires and food to last 5 people for the next 8 meals. It was a tight fit getting that much food and firewood into the car, but in the end we emerged victorious.
While we were in town we decided to call Kim and Owen to figure out when they would be gettting to the park. Earlier in the day we had placed bets on when they would make. It was a 700 mile drive and if they had left at a reasonable time in the morning (6am), they should have been at Glacier sometime around 6pm. I guessed that they would make it by 8pm, Chris guessed 10:45pm and Sean guessed that for one reason or another that they wouldn't show at all. When we got ahold of them at about quarter to 5 they were in Butte, MT about 5 hours from the park. It looked like Chris was going to win the bet.
Despite all being tired from a long and hard day of playing, we all decided to stay up until Kim and Owen showed up at the campground. We burned through a whole bundle of firewood as we sat around and shot the shit around the fire. When the first bundle was gone, we were all tired, but decided to persevere. We burned through an entire second bundle of firewood before finally calling it quits sometime around midnight.
Day Two - Arriving at Glacier
Thursday, August 11th
I woke up Thursday morning to overcast skies. I never knew that August could be so cold. I rode most of the day beneath what appeared to be one giant cloud covering the entire state of Montana. It occurred to me as I turned onto North Hwy 89 when it separated from I-90 that after a day and a morning of riding that I was only just beginning to drive down roads that I had never previously been on. It was actually a good feeling to be exploring a new stretch of road. That is, of course, until you discover that the new stretch of road is under heavy construction. There was about a 10 mile stretch of Hwy 89 that had been totally ripped up and was currently little more than dirt and gravel with a couple of flag men directing traffic through one lane at a time. Of course with the recent rain the makeshift road had turned into muddy mess.
It wasn't all bad though. The highlight of the day was a 30 mile stretch of Hwy 89 between White Sulphur Springs and Great Falls, MT that ran through the Lewis and Clark National Forest. It was a beautiful stretch of road that followed a winding river and was lined with mountains carpeted in pine The road had recently received a fresh coating of tar and gravel; I believe that they call the process chip sealing. It wasn't so recent that there still signs up warning about loose gravel but recent enough that there was some loose gravel still on the road. As I was leaning hard into a corner at about 70 miles per hour I all of the sudden felt my rear tire give way and start to slide. I was able to pull out of it by letting of the throttle and reducing the lean but it still scared the hell out of me.
I stopped at the Harley dealership in Great Falls to pick up a t-shirt. I decided that Great Falls was going to be one of three towns that I stopped in for new Harley t-shirts. I'm also hoping to get t-shirts from Seattle and San Diego. The front of a Harley shirt is usually designed by Harley themselves and are available at any dealership. However the back of the shirt is always designed by the dealership. Although most dealers usually have several patterns to choose from including several that show little more than the dealer's name, city and state, I usually like to get a shirt with a dealer logo that shows the character of either the dealership or the town that the dealership is located in. One of the dealer logos at the Great Falls dealership depicted Lewis and Clark crossing a river with a Harley floating in a canoe. It was too hilarious not to buy.
I didn't see blue sky or sunshine until I was about an hour outside of the Glacier National Park. On the final stretch of hwy 89 before entering the park at St. Mary I had my second freaky experience of the day. As I rounded a corner I noticed something step out of the bushes and onto the road a 100 feet or so up the road. At first I thought that it was a buffalo, but then realized that it was just a very large bull. This thing was huge and had some very scary looking horns. I stopped about 20 feet away from it and seemed to catch it's attention. It just stood in the middle of the road giving me a very dirty look. If the thing decided to charge me I would have had neither the room nor the time to turn the bike around to run away. So, I just started to slowly walk my bike backwards to put some distance in between this behemoth and myself. Eventually a car came from the opposite direction and scared it off the road.
When I finally made it to St. Mary campground I was greeted by a park ranger who seemed to know not just who I was but where I was going. She took one look at me and said, “You must be Christensen”. It turns out that Chris and Sean, who weren't supposed to show up for another couple of hours had actually managed to beat me to the park by a couple of hours and left instructions for the rangers to keep an eye out for someone checking into the campground on a motorcycle. I was surprised that the description, “someone on a motorcycle” was a distinct enough description considering how many bikes were on the road in the park on the way to or back from Sturgis. Apparently not many of the bikers that pass through the park, camp in the park.
After settling in, eating and stocking up on supplies for the night and next morning, we decided to do a quick hike before dark. St. Mary Falls was the most interesting hike closest to our campground. Ironically, it was the same hike that I did last year when I rode through the park. I didn't mind repeating the hike since the last time it was pouring rain. Unfortunately, history was doomed to repeat itself. As we left for the hike thunderclouds were already starting to drift over the pass from the West side of the park. Just as we were nearing the falls the heavens let loose and we were made wet. It was twice as fun this time since on top of the rain we were competing with the waning daylight. By the time that we got back to the car it was pretty dark and we were all pretty damp.
Back at camp the rain had subsided and we were able to build a fire to warm up... at least temporarily. The rain started up again and this time with a vengeance. We let the rain put out the fire as we sought shelter in our respective tents. It was then that I originally began writing this post. But as I mentioned previously, as the rain and wind became violent, I thought it better that the laptop was tucked away neatly in my waterproof bag so that I didn't need to worry about it if I needed to make a mad dash for dryer shelter.
I woke up Thursday morning to overcast skies. I never knew that August could be so cold. I rode most of the day beneath what appeared to be one giant cloud covering the entire state of Montana. It occurred to me as I turned onto North Hwy 89 when it separated from I-90 that after a day and a morning of riding that I was only just beginning to drive down roads that I had never previously been on. It was actually a good feeling to be exploring a new stretch of road. That is, of course, until you discover that the new stretch of road is under heavy construction. There was about a 10 mile stretch of Hwy 89 that had been totally ripped up and was currently little more than dirt and gravel with a couple of flag men directing traffic through one lane at a time. Of course with the recent rain the makeshift road had turned into muddy mess.
It wasn't all bad though. The highlight of the day was a 30 mile stretch of Hwy 89 between White Sulphur Springs and Great Falls, MT that ran through the Lewis and Clark National Forest. It was a beautiful stretch of road that followed a winding river and was lined with mountains carpeted in pine The road had recently received a fresh coating of tar and gravel; I believe that they call the process chip sealing. It wasn't so recent that there still signs up warning about loose gravel but recent enough that there was some loose gravel still on the road. As I was leaning hard into a corner at about 70 miles per hour I all of the sudden felt my rear tire give way and start to slide. I was able to pull out of it by letting of the throttle and reducing the lean but it still scared the hell out of me.
I stopped at the Harley dealership in Great Falls to pick up a t-shirt. I decided that Great Falls was going to be one of three towns that I stopped in for new Harley t-shirts. I'm also hoping to get t-shirts from Seattle and San Diego. The front of a Harley shirt is usually designed by Harley themselves and are available at any dealership. However the back of the shirt is always designed by the dealership. Although most dealers usually have several patterns to choose from including several that show little more than the dealer's name, city and state, I usually like to get a shirt with a dealer logo that shows the character of either the dealership or the town that the dealership is located in. One of the dealer logos at the Great Falls dealership depicted Lewis and Clark crossing a river with a Harley floating in a canoe. It was too hilarious not to buy.
I didn't see blue sky or sunshine until I was about an hour outside of the Glacier National Park. On the final stretch of hwy 89 before entering the park at St. Mary I had my second freaky experience of the day. As I rounded a corner I noticed something step out of the bushes and onto the road a 100 feet or so up the road. At first I thought that it was a buffalo, but then realized that it was just a very large bull. This thing was huge and had some very scary looking horns. I stopped about 20 feet away from it and seemed to catch it's attention. It just stood in the middle of the road giving me a very dirty look. If the thing decided to charge me I would have had neither the room nor the time to turn the bike around to run away. So, I just started to slowly walk my bike backwards to put some distance in between this behemoth and myself. Eventually a car came from the opposite direction and scared it off the road.
When I finally made it to St. Mary campground I was greeted by a park ranger who seemed to know not just who I was but where I was going. She took one look at me and said, “You must be Christensen”. It turns out that Chris and Sean, who weren't supposed to show up for another couple of hours had actually managed to beat me to the park by a couple of hours and left instructions for the rangers to keep an eye out for someone checking into the campground on a motorcycle. I was surprised that the description, “someone on a motorcycle” was a distinct enough description considering how many bikes were on the road in the park on the way to or back from Sturgis. Apparently not many of the bikers that pass through the park, camp in the park.
After settling in, eating and stocking up on supplies for the night and next morning, we decided to do a quick hike before dark. St. Mary Falls was the most interesting hike closest to our campground. Ironically, it was the same hike that I did last year when I rode through the park. I didn't mind repeating the hike since the last time it was pouring rain. Unfortunately, history was doomed to repeat itself. As we left for the hike thunderclouds were already starting to drift over the pass from the West side of the park. Just as we were nearing the falls the heavens let loose and we were made wet. It was twice as fun this time since on top of the rain we were competing with the waning daylight. By the time that we got back to the car it was pretty dark and we were all pretty damp.
Back at camp the rain had subsided and we were able to build a fire to warm up... at least temporarily. The rain started up again and this time with a vengeance. We let the rain put out the fire as we sought shelter in our respective tents. It was then that I originally began writing this post. But as I mentioned previously, as the rain and wind became violent, I thought it better that the laptop was tucked away neatly in my waterproof bag so that I didn't need to worry about it if I needed to make a mad dash for dryer shelter.
Day One - On the road
Wednesday August 10th
All's well that ends well. Sitting and relaxing here in my tent everything seems OK now. I wasn't sure that it was going to work out that way over the course of the day though. I always forget when I plan how many miles I'm going to ride in a day to account for the average speed through a given area. It is almost always slower going when you are riding through, say, a national park. That is doubly so when you are riding through Yellowstone National Park.
I was originally hoping to make it to the Mammoth Hot Springs campground by mid afternoon. It was about 3PM when I reached the south entrance of Yellowstone, so I figured that I was roughly on schedule. I had less than 90 miles to ride through the park and the sign at the South entrance noted that there were still spots available in Mammoth Hot Springs. By the time that I had actually reached the campground 3 and a half hours later that was no longer the case.
I really had my heart set on camping but had resigned to get a hotel room for the night somewhere north of the park. The thought of a hotel room was all the more enticing considering that I was still a little wet and cold from riding in the rain earlier in the day and that the weather looked like it might be unpleasant overnight. I thought that I was lucky when I exited through the North entrance of the park and noticed that a number of hotel rooms had vacancies.
The first spot that I stopped at wanted $80 for a dingy motel room. I just couldn't bring myself to pay that. I had paid more than that for hotel rooms in the past but I'm going to be on the road for the next 18 days. If I break down and pay $80 for a hotel every time that I have a tough time finding a campground then I'll be broke by the end of the trip. So, I decided to push on and look for either another campground outside of the park or for a cheaper hotel room a little farther north.
Luckily, I stumbled onto an RV park just a couple of miles outside of the park that had a tent site available for the low, low price of $25 including a hot shower in the morning. Even better than the price was the location. The tent sites sat overlooking the Yellowstone river. It was a good thing that I got settled in when I did. As I sit writing this now in my tent, the wind and rain are blowing so hard that I fear that the tent will not survive the night. I was hoping to be lulled to sleep by the sound of water running in the background. Unfortunately the only water that I can hear right now is the sound of the rain pummeling the tent.
It won't be the first rain that I've had to survive through today. In fact, the rain has pretty much been threatening ever since I left Utah this morning. Utah bade me farewell by painting it's skies black with thunderclouds. Fortunately, she was nice enough not to actually rain on me. That honor was bestowed upon the state of Wyoming. The rain started just as I was leaving Jackson Wyoming and heading into Teton National Park. Fortunately I thought ahead to put on my rain gear. I rode about 50 miles in pouring rain, thunder and lightning before it finally subsided just before entering Yellowstone.
All in all, it's been a pretty good day. I rode 500 miles through 4 different states (Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana) and got to see some pretty beautiful country. The weather could have been nicer and I am a little pissed off that I have managed once again to ride through Yellowstone without actually doing anything IN Yellowstone but, hey, I guess you can't win 'em all. By the way, the rain has stopped now and I can hear the sound of the river again. Good night.
All's well that ends well. Sitting and relaxing here in my tent everything seems OK now. I wasn't sure that it was going to work out that way over the course of the day though. I always forget when I plan how many miles I'm going to ride in a day to account for the average speed through a given area. It is almost always slower going when you are riding through, say, a national park. That is doubly so when you are riding through Yellowstone National Park.
I was originally hoping to make it to the Mammoth Hot Springs campground by mid afternoon. It was about 3PM when I reached the south entrance of Yellowstone, so I figured that I was roughly on schedule. I had less than 90 miles to ride through the park and the sign at the South entrance noted that there were still spots available in Mammoth Hot Springs. By the time that I had actually reached the campground 3 and a half hours later that was no longer the case.
I really had my heart set on camping but had resigned to get a hotel room for the night somewhere north of the park. The thought of a hotel room was all the more enticing considering that I was still a little wet and cold from riding in the rain earlier in the day and that the weather looked like it might be unpleasant overnight. I thought that I was lucky when I exited through the North entrance of the park and noticed that a number of hotel rooms had vacancies.
The first spot that I stopped at wanted $80 for a dingy motel room. I just couldn't bring myself to pay that. I had paid more than that for hotel rooms in the past but I'm going to be on the road for the next 18 days. If I break down and pay $80 for a hotel every time that I have a tough time finding a campground then I'll be broke by the end of the trip. So, I decided to push on and look for either another campground outside of the park or for a cheaper hotel room a little farther north.
Luckily, I stumbled onto an RV park just a couple of miles outside of the park that had a tent site available for the low, low price of $25 including a hot shower in the morning. Even better than the price was the location. The tent sites sat overlooking the Yellowstone river. It was a good thing that I got settled in when I did. As I sit writing this now in my tent, the wind and rain are blowing so hard that I fear that the tent will not survive the night. I was hoping to be lulled to sleep by the sound of water running in the background. Unfortunately the only water that I can hear right now is the sound of the rain pummeling the tent.
It won't be the first rain that I've had to survive through today. In fact, the rain has pretty much been threatening ever since I left Utah this morning. Utah bade me farewell by painting it's skies black with thunderclouds. Fortunately, she was nice enough not to actually rain on me. That honor was bestowed upon the state of Wyoming. The rain started just as I was leaving Jackson Wyoming and heading into Teton National Park. Fortunately I thought ahead to put on my rain gear. I rode about 50 miles in pouring rain, thunder and lightning before it finally subsided just before entering Yellowstone.
All in all, it's been a pretty good day. I rode 500 miles through 4 different states (Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana) and got to see some pretty beautiful country. The weather could have been nicer and I am a little pissed off that I have managed once again to ride through Yellowstone without actually doing anything IN Yellowstone but, hey, I guess you can't win 'em all. By the way, the rain has stopped now and I can hear the sound of the river again. Good night.
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Locked, Loaded and Ready to Go
The bike is packed, the route is mapped and I'm ready to go. I'll be out for the next 19 days on a trip throughout the western United States. Over the next couple of days I'll head up to Glacier National Park where I will meet up with some friends from Wisconsin for a couple of days of camping, hiking and heavy drinking. From there I head West into Northern Washington State. I'll spend a couple of days in North Cascade National Park and Olympic National Park before riding down the entire length of the Western Coast.
Although I plan on camping most of the time, I'll probably stay in a hotel or two along the way. If I am lucky enough to stumble upon wireless internet access I may post from the road (I'm bringing my tablet PC).
My final two songs before two weeks of iTunes silence: "Family Business" by Kanye West, "Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta" by Geto Boys.
See ya in a couple of weeks.
Although I plan on camping most of the time, I'll probably stay in a hotel or two along the way. If I am lucky enough to stumble upon wireless internet access I may post from the road (I'm bringing my tablet PC).
My final two songs before two weeks of iTunes silence: "Family Business" by Kanye West, "Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta" by Geto Boys.
See ya in a couple of weeks.
Monday, August 08, 2005
No More Big & Tall
I've lost a little bit of weight lately and as a result most of my jeans don't fit me very well anymore. Ironically I just bought 3 brand new pairs of jeans a couple of months ago just as I was starting to lose the weight. So, now I have three pairs of jeans that fit me very loosely. Anyway, I'm about to head out on a road trip where I will be doing a lot of hiking and I wanted to get some new jeans that fit me. I was previously wearing a 46x30 which has required me to shop in the big and tall section of most stores.
So, when I went shopping for new jeans today I went straight to the Big and Tall section. I grabbed a pair of jeans that were one size smaller, 44x30, and headed off to the fitting room. To my surprise, the new jeans still fit a little (just a tiny bit) loose. Just to amuse myself, I thought that I would try on a pair of 42x30 jeans. I returned back to the Big and Tall section to look for the smaller size and discovered something very pleasant after spending several minutes rummaging through Levi's. It occurred to me that I had just graduated out of the Big and Tall sizes back into the normal sized people sizes which were kept in an entirely different section of the store (who knows what kind of havoc would be unleashed if the big and/or tall people intermingled with the normal sized people).
As it turns out, the 42x30's were a little (just a tiny bit) snug but nowhere near as snug as I've worn some jeans in the past. So, I decided to buy them anyway. Actually I bought both pairs of jeans. I will probably take the 44x30's on my trip with me and hope that over the course of 17 days of rigorous hiking and riding that I will drop that extra half a size and fit perfectly into the non Big & Tall 42x30 jeans when I return.
So, when I went shopping for new jeans today I went straight to the Big and Tall section. I grabbed a pair of jeans that were one size smaller, 44x30, and headed off to the fitting room. To my surprise, the new jeans still fit a little (just a tiny bit) loose. Just to amuse myself, I thought that I would try on a pair of 42x30 jeans. I returned back to the Big and Tall section to look for the smaller size and discovered something very pleasant after spending several minutes rummaging through Levi's. It occurred to me that I had just graduated out of the Big and Tall sizes back into the normal sized people sizes which were kept in an entirely different section of the store (who knows what kind of havoc would be unleashed if the big and/or tall people intermingled with the normal sized people).
As it turns out, the 42x30's were a little (just a tiny bit) snug but nowhere near as snug as I've worn some jeans in the past. So, I decided to buy them anyway. Actually I bought both pairs of jeans. I will probably take the 44x30's on my trip with me and hope that over the course of 17 days of rigorous hiking and riding that I will drop that extra half a size and fit perfectly into the non Big & Tall 42x30 jeans when I return.
Sunday, August 07, 2005
Maple Canyon and Minnetonka Cave
Been busy this weekend. On Saturday I went hiking in Maple Canyon. It's a 5.1 mile (one way) trail in Uinta National Forest that leads up to Spanish Fork peak. Over the course of those 5.1 miles you gain nearly 5000 ft. in elevation. That's an average of a 20% grade. Ouch! True to my style, I stopped at Maple Canyon Lake at around 4.2 miles :) I figured that an 8 mile round trip was plenty of agony for an impulse hiking trip.
Later on Saturday night we celebrated my niece, Sophie's, 2nd birthday. I got her a couple of little people playsets. It's surprisingly hard to shop for a 2 year old. I wanted to be the cool uncle and get her something really nice, but for a 2 year old, "really nice" toys generally mean obnoxiously large (i.e. a little tykes backyard swingset and slide). Since my brother lives in a 2 bedroom apartment, I didn't think that they would appreciate a monstrously large gift.
Sunday morning I woke up early and decided that I would finally get back to visit Minnetonka Cave. I stumbled upon the cave a couple of weeks ago while I was out riding. I had even purchased tickets for the cave tour but then decided that I was too impatient to wait the 2 hours until the next tour started. So, ever since then, I've been meaning to get back up there.
The plan was to wake up early, ride up to Bear Lake for one of the morning tours and then be back by early afternoon to take care of things around the house. Unfortunately, things didn't work out quite that way. I left the house at quarter to 7, had breakfast at Village Inn and then worked my way up to Bear Lake through the back roads. A little more than 5 hours, one wrong turn, and a brief but torrential downpour later, I purchased tickets for the 2 P.M. cave tour.
I hate to say that the cave tour wasn't worth it, because I always think that it's worth it to go exploring in a cave (even when the exploring is moderated by a tour guide), but this cave was in bad shape. From previous cave tours I had learned that there are two things that are commonly done in caves when they are opened up publicly that are very damaging to the cave and must be controlled. The first is that the lighting that is installed to illuminate the cave formations often causes algae growth on the formations.
Algae does not naturally grow in caves because there is no light. In other caves they have clued into this and will only turn the lights on in a room as the tour group is walking through. In addition they have experimented with different types of lighting to control the algae growth. In Minnetonka cave the lights appeared to be left on all day (i.e. the tour guides didn't make any effort to turn them off as they moved to different areas) and the resulting algae growth was disgusting. You can see some of the damage in the photos that I took. Note that the above picture is actually a formation illuminated by green lighting and not a formation plagued with algae.
The second thing is that when the entrance of the cave is opened up it increases the airflow through the cave and causes it to dry out. Most other caves have installed doors at the entrance of the cave and sometimes even between sections of the cave to control the airflow through the cave. Tour guides are usually really careful to make sure that the doors are always shut behind them before moving on to a different section of the cave. There was a door at the entrance of Minnetonka cave but it looked like it was only shut at night to make sure that people could not get into the cave.
The lighting in the cave was pretty amusing. They used these cheesy colored lights all over the place. Half of the time the lighting wasn't even shining on the cave formations. It was almost as if the lighting was just "mood" lighting. The lighting also seemed to be strewn about haphazardly. For instance, there was a lot of formations where there was one light shining at the formation and another light shining away from it directly at you... making it really difficult to get a good picture.
Speaking of lighting, I've always been disappointed with the pictures that I've taken in caves. This is because the flash from the camera gives the formations an entirely different look than what you experience first-hand. So, this time, I decided to take all (most) of the pictures with just the natural lighting in the cave. Because of the reduced lighting the the exposure time is much longer and you really need to hold the camera perfectly still for a couple of seconds. Some of the pictures turned out OK but most of the time I failed at holding the camera perfectly still.
Later on Saturday night we celebrated my niece, Sophie's, 2nd birthday. I got her a couple of little people playsets. It's surprisingly hard to shop for a 2 year old. I wanted to be the cool uncle and get her something really nice, but for a 2 year old, "really nice" toys generally mean obnoxiously large (i.e. a little tykes backyard swingset and slide). Since my brother lives in a 2 bedroom apartment, I didn't think that they would appreciate a monstrously large gift.
Sunday morning I woke up early and decided that I would finally get back to visit Minnetonka Cave. I stumbled upon the cave a couple of weeks ago while I was out riding. I had even purchased tickets for the cave tour but then decided that I was too impatient to wait the 2 hours until the next tour started. So, ever since then, I've been meaning to get back up there.
The plan was to wake up early, ride up to Bear Lake for one of the morning tours and then be back by early afternoon to take care of things around the house. Unfortunately, things didn't work out quite that way. I left the house at quarter to 7, had breakfast at Village Inn and then worked my way up to Bear Lake through the back roads. A little more than 5 hours, one wrong turn, and a brief but torrential downpour later, I purchased tickets for the 2 P.M. cave tour.
I hate to say that the cave tour wasn't worth it, because I always think that it's worth it to go exploring in a cave (even when the exploring is moderated by a tour guide), but this cave was in bad shape. From previous cave tours I had learned that there are two things that are commonly done in caves when they are opened up publicly that are very damaging to the cave and must be controlled. The first is that the lighting that is installed to illuminate the cave formations often causes algae growth on the formations.
Algae does not naturally grow in caves because there is no light. In other caves they have clued into this and will only turn the lights on in a room as the tour group is walking through. In addition they have experimented with different types of lighting to control the algae growth. In Minnetonka cave the lights appeared to be left on all day (i.e. the tour guides didn't make any effort to turn them off as they moved to different areas) and the resulting algae growth was disgusting. You can see some of the damage in the photos that I took. Note that the above picture is actually a formation illuminated by green lighting and not a formation plagued with algae.
The second thing is that when the entrance of the cave is opened up it increases the airflow through the cave and causes it to dry out. Most other caves have installed doors at the entrance of the cave and sometimes even between sections of the cave to control the airflow through the cave. Tour guides are usually really careful to make sure that the doors are always shut behind them before moving on to a different section of the cave. There was a door at the entrance of Minnetonka cave but it looked like it was only shut at night to make sure that people could not get into the cave.
The lighting in the cave was pretty amusing. They used these cheesy colored lights all over the place. Half of the time the lighting wasn't even shining on the cave formations. It was almost as if the lighting was just "mood" lighting. The lighting also seemed to be strewn about haphazardly. For instance, there was a lot of formations where there was one light shining at the formation and another light shining away from it directly at you... making it really difficult to get a good picture.
Speaking of lighting, I've always been disappointed with the pictures that I've taken in caves. This is because the flash from the camera gives the formations an entirely different look than what you experience first-hand. So, this time, I decided to take all (most) of the pictures with just the natural lighting in the cave. Because of the reduced lighting the the exposure time is much longer and you really need to hold the camera perfectly still for a couple of seconds. Some of the pictures turned out OK but most of the time I failed at holding the camera perfectly still.
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