Day 16 - June 27, 2015

If you look closely you will see Larry amongst the big trees.

Hide-and-seek.

Check out the tree with this deck built around it.  Like Jack and the Beanstalk

it seemed to reach to the sky.

And then we got back to the coast.

That is the ocean beyond the foliage.

A look from high on the cliff (along side California Hwy 1).

And another.

Lunch in Fort Bragg.  This is an exterior view of  their rest room.  Out back.

Quirky.

Day 16.  June 27, 2015.  Overnight in Ureka, California,  Still headed north.

When we awoke this morning in Ukiah, California (Pop. 16,000) the temperature was in the 50's. After eating breakfast and loading the bikes we rode south on US 101 for about 4 miles where we picked up California Hwy 253 westbound.  253 took us over the mountains to Boonville, CA.  From there we worked our way back to the coast and picked up Hwy 1 again.

The ride on 253 across the mountains was spectacular, offering mountain riding amazingly similar in a lot of ways to the eastern Kentucky or eastern Tennessee mountain riding....at least to the road layout, surface, etc.  It had steep turns, switchbacks, turns that became steep climbs, and others that were descents.  It was the typical mountain road.  The difference was the scenery.  There were trees, in some places, and there was mostly good road surfaces.  The big difference was/is that the grass in all areas across the mountain was/is brown, and there were/are huge spaces where no trees were/are growing, only brown grass. I like this ride.

When we got to the coast we began to see more of the breathtaking views of the coastline we had seen yesterday. Occasionally the cliffs were higher, and the face of the cliffs were/are more jagged.  The tide was out so there was a sand beach at the bottom of those cliffs.  The temperature over the mountain increased top the mid 80's.  Along the coast it was low 60's.

Hwy 1, and later Hwy 1 and 101, took us away from the coast line for much of our trip to our evening's destination.  We went through one California state park and took a short side trip to another.  This part of the trip could easily be called "A Day With The Big Trees"  If you look closely at the top photo included with this post you can see Larry walking in a forested area where we stopped.  These trees are a re-growth of a cutting done a little over 100 years ago of the Old Growth Forest forest that stood here.  The stumps from the previous cutting still remain.  Redwood is very rot resistant,

Cutting in this area began in the 1870's.  The first trees cut were the ones nearest the ocean.  There were no roads in the area at the time.  Hwy 1 was commenced in the 1930's.  The stretch of road through Fort Bragg was not completed until 1955.  A renumbering of the roads and a completion of the full length of Hwy 1 (a.k.a Pacific Coast Highway) was not accomplished until 1964. In the early days logs were moved to the lumber yards along the ocean by teams of oxen (usually 10 or more to a team), and from there the logs were floated or shipped south.

The San Francisco earthquake, and resulting fires, of 1906 caused Fort Bragg (Pop. 7,500) and other logging communities to become boom towns as the big trees were felled with great rapidity to fuel the re-building of the great city. Although redwood tree logging continues in the areas north and south of Fort Bragg, the industry is but a flicker of the bonfire it was in previous years.

Highways US 101 and California 1 join and become one near Leggett, CA.  At this location it is a two lane road, but within less than 10 miles it becomes a four-lane interstate.  We continued to follow this highway into Eureka, California (Pop.27,000) where we spent the night.

Eureka, CA is approximately 100 miles south of the Oregon border and is 270 miles north of San Francisco.

Another good day.