Cycling the California coast to Santa Barbara: Bike and Book tour Part III

When we reached the border of California, in Crescent City, we unknowingly waved goodbye to our ice-cream, carousel and cute-seaside-fishing-town bike trip in Oregon. Not that the coast of Oregon had been flat, or easy to bike or very populated. But relative to California, biking the Oregon coast was a summer picnic. At least in Oregon, we had plenty of ice-cream to help us up the hills 😊.

The coast of California, like the state, deserves every superlative you can throw at it—good and bad. It’s long. We’ve biked over a thousand miles since Crescent City and still haven’t reached Los Angeles—although we’re almost there, just 60 miles away!. It’s extremely steep and hilly (well the Californians call these things hills, but there are at least five serious climbs above 1000-2000 feet along the route. Our daily elevation gain has averaged between 2000-5000 feet. For all our Seattle friends, that’s like biking over Snoqualmie Pass—and often back again—every day).

And it’s about as far from civilization as you can get, unless you want to go to Alaska. We’ve cycled several two to three day sections without finding a grocery store or even a gas station to buy food. Instead of fueling ourselves over the hills with wonderful Oregon ice-cream, we’ve been pedaling down the California coast on bags of homemade gorp, created at the rare, large supermarkets where we reprovisioned every few days. I do admit that gorp (good old raisins and peanuts) is probably more nutritious. But it’s not that motivating to grind your way up yet another hill to eat a stale bag of dried raisins and peanuts as a reward!

Indeed, the reason you haven’t heard much from us for the past month is that most of the time we’ve been lucky to get a–weak–cell phone signal every two to three days. We chatted to an older gentleman in a ‘village’ (i.e. cluster of five houses with one tiny general store) south of Fort Bragg on the northern coast, who explained that the U.S. has three designations for health care facilities: urban, rural and frontier. There are only a dozen frontier clinics in the U.S. and they aren’t all in Alaska, apparently. This gentleman was taking a bus forty miles down the coast of northern California to get to his frontier clinic for medical care.

But all of these challenges are worth it. The California coast is jaw-dropping, breathtakingly beautiful, with miles of cliffside roads overlooking untouched, pristine beaches and coves, haunted by the cries of cormorants and eagles, and dotted with rocky islets, home to barking, basking seals and sealions. Big Sur, on the central coast, deserves its reputation as one of the most beautiful drives (and bike rides) in the world with over one hundred miles of twisting, climbing, uninhabited roads leading to beautiful pull-outs where we could stop, catch our breath, admire the stunning coastline—and yes, eat stale gorp.

The northern California coast also has some of the oldest forests and largest trees (some over 25 feet in diameter) in the world—the Redwoods. One of our of most memorable moments of the journey so far was one silent, cool evening as we cycled through the Redwoods National Park just before sunset trying to read our campsite at Elk Meadows (aptly named since elk herds wander the area regularly). We pedaled along an empty ten mile stretch of ancient Redwood groves, gasping in awe at these towering, gnarly, gigantic beings that had been there since long before Christopher Columbus and sometimes, even the Romans. Alone with the trees and the growing dusk, I could feel the peace and wisdom of these ancient trees which had seen so much over the centuries.

Last but not least, the campsites are to die for—spots nestled under groves of Redwood trees, or on cliffs overlooking the ocean with waves lulling you to sleep. Fortunately, since we were cycling during peak tourist season, the entire west coast of the U.S. has a marvelous system of hiker-biker campsites especially set aside for cyclists and hikers.  We could arrive at most state parks late and tired, knowing we would have a site, regardless of whether or not the rest of the campground was full—which it usually was.

We’re almost done with our west coast journey now. Ahead of us is a mere 200 miles of urban California cycling from LA to San Diego. We have five talks scheduled at REI and Patagonia stores along the route, where we’ll be sharing stories and pictures from our world adventures (and coastal travels). You can check out where we’ll be on our events calendar on our website, or on Instagram and FB at bike4breath.

And then it’s on to a hopefully much shorter, easier, more populated, fall-color bike (and train) tour down the east coast from Maine to Washington D.C. We look forward to seeing all of our east coast friends soon. Thanks for following along on our adventures!