The Road Less Travelled

Getting off the highway is one of the greatest joys of cycling. Cruising down a quite rural route, whether it's snaking along the ocean's shore or winding through giant redwood forests, is infinitely more enjoyable than choking on smog and watching gigantic trucks full of gigantic logs racing towards the mill (though we do love all the flattering and encouraging honks we get on the highways).

Luckily, the pacific coast bike route is well marked and often leads us down less busy roads. And even when it doesn't, we ask locals if there's any way to stay off the freeway.

Coming into Arcata a few days ago, this led us down a few very interesting paths....

First, we wound back and forth, up and down on a roller-coaster of a road the hugged a steep hillside and overlooked the ocean. Eventually, we came to a "road closed ahead" sign, but we were told by locals that we could probably make it through. We came to the baracade a few miles further on and wheeled our bikes around it....to find that the road had sunk down about 8 feet in a landslide, leaving a series of huge steps in the pavement. It was awkward to manoeuver bikes and bobs through the obstacle course, but we had some good laughs doing it and taking pictures of one another.

Back on smoother pavement, we started to follow bike route signs again, and as the road became more and more narrow and more and more encrusted with dried manure, we started looking around and laughing, wondering if we'd gotten ourselves lost in farm land. Cows lines both sides of the road that was barely wide enough for a single car and we choked on the smell of fresh manure. And just when we thought that we must have gotten ourselves off track, another bike route sign appeared and ushered us into Aracata (the craziest hippy town you could imagine, but more on that from one of the other girls!).

As we look down the map to southern California and see our small coastal roads turning into huge double-lane highways, we're keeping our fingers crossed that there will be more little roads like this where we can dodge washouts and cow patties :)

~ Christine