Santa Cruz to Seattle

I left Santa Cruz on Wednesday, September 24th. The weather was pleasant, and I took US-101 north, crossing the Golden Gate Bridge and headed for Oregon. I had arranged to stay at Shibumi's house, out in the countryside just inland from Newport, a working fishing town.

Because I was looking forward to a pretty grueling trip to Birmingham, I wanted to enjoy this part as much as possible. Crashboy keeps talking about this great road, FS-1, that leads from Mad River on CA-36 to Berry Summit on CA-299, not far from the junction with CA-96. This was just a bit of a detour from my intended route, and FS-1 is only about 50 miles long.

Of course, I could just ride up 101 to 36, but there's a nice set of back roads that leads right to Mad River from Garberville on 101, through Alderpoint, Zenia and Ruth Lake. It's possibly shorter, too, though it must be pointed out that these little roads are slower. Much slower.

But, the day is young, the weather lovely, and it seems like the smoke from a forest fire is lighter in that direction. However, there's a little catch after passing Alderpoint: they're working on the Zenia road, and recommend a detour through Kettenpom. That looks nice on the map, but it turns out that most of it isn't paved, and so I have to go pretty slowly. What was a 10 minute trip to Zenia turns into most of an hour. And coming down to Ruth Lake, I'm starting to get worried about my fuel situation, which I had originally thought would be fine into Arcata.

Fortunately, there's a campground/motel/conveneince store/gas station along the Ruth Lake road. I stop to fill up and get a snack. As I enjoyed my ice cream bar, a ranger drove up. I asked her about FS-1, just to be certain. I learned about it, about how to find it, and about the several forest fires that are burning in the Six Rivers National Forest.

The roads continued to be wonderful. No traffic, lots of scenery, plenty of sunshine and shadows from the trees. I made it out to CA-36 and found FS-1 easily. Crashboy was right, this is a great road. For 50 miles it winds back and forth over numerous ridges. No traffic except for a few hunters and a bull that gives me a wary eye as I slowly idle past him. I saw a few cows off the road along with some deer. Just great.

But by the time I got back to US-101 at Arcata, it was very clear that I would never make Shibumi's place that night; the sun was already setting. So, when I got to Crescent City, I found a motel and called it a wonderful day, and a great start to a big trip.

The ride up the Oregon coast to Newport was lovely. I had lunch with Shibumi and got to see his new office in town. Then we went out to his spread for some more chit chat with his lovely wife Lorel. Then I took some back roads, before ultimately getting on to I-5 at Albany. I worked around Portland's rush hour on I-205, which didn't actually turn out to be any better than going straight through town, and got to Steve's place in Bellevue a bit after dark.

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