Our second day in Redding dawned overcast and cool, not nearly as nice as our first sunny afternoon in the city. But we wanted to do a longer ride, so we bundled up and headed out after breakfast. Since it was a Sunday, the Sacramento River Trail was pretty busy with people walking, cycling, and running. We first headed down to the fascinating Sundial Bridge for a couple of photos. Amazingly, I managed to catch this one of Barry with no other people in it! The greenish panels in bridge deck apparently have a natural luminescence at night, but we didn't get to see that, unfortunately. We headed east to make sure we rode all of the trail, including a few spurs over to shops and a neighborhood. This portion of the trail ran alongside the highway. We liked how they'd paid homage to bicycling in the artwork on the concrete wall separating trail and road. Below is a portion of the trail that climbs way up high to a hilltop access point. Once you get to the top, you can see much of the city down below, and all the green trees near the Sacramento River. It was a difficult climb up with several switchbacks, but a fun, fast descent, which I'm enjoying in this photo. If you look closely, you can see that I peeled off my blue vest after the tough climb -- I got warm! We discovered an arts and crafts show going on in a park alongside the river trail, but we didn't stop to look. We continued on the river trail until we reached the connecting Sacramento Rail Trail portion at Keswick Dam. I discussed this portion of the trail in the previous post. I found a review by a frequent Traillink reviewer, TrailBear, of the first section of this trail involving a very steep climb. Here is the part of his review that made me laugh out loud. It is very accurate! Start at the new trailhead at the base of what they call Heart Rate Hill. Apt name, that. If you time your ascent and measure your pulse at the upper sign, you can determine fitness. By that point, you probably knew: Could be better. If you cycle the Lower Rail Trail every other day for a month or two, you will be much fitter. It twists. It turns. It climbs. It descends. It repeats all the previous as it climbs up each ridge, descends the other side, crosses the creek and climbs again. So, we did this climb for the second time in two days, and I was seriously wondering what we were thinking. But once we got through the tough part, we reached the former rail corridor and had a lovely, much easier ride up to the Shasta Dam and were rewarded with beautiful views. Just wish it had been sunnier. The river was so green and smooth as glass -- no wind! There was a small campground at the Shasta Dam Trailhead, along with hiking and dirt biking trails. Unfortunately, with it being Sunday, the dirt bikers were out in force. Vrooom-vrooom! Not very peaceful. On the way back there are some climbs on the connector portion of the trail before reaching the steep downhill switchback portion. This is a serious workout! Once back on the Sacramento River Trail, we headed along the other side of the river and took the Middle Creek Trail. This spur trail is approximately 3 miles long and mostly uphill on the way to the town of Old Shasta. It was a challenge but lots of fun once we got to the end and turned around! Near the end it got really steep for a short ways -- and here I thought I was done with serious climbing for the day! But I was earning my food.... Coming back down was a lot more fun. I could breath easy! Once back on the river trail, we needed to cross back over to the other side. We saw that the bridge was blocked by a truck with huge crane and asked someone what was going on. Turns out they were doing a "duck drop" for prizes to help out the schools. There were tons of spectators on the other side of the river hoping their duck would win the "race" and they'd win a prize. It was fun to watch but the actual drop kept getting delayed for reasons unknown to us. At last, it was time, and down came the rubber duckies! And they're off! It looked like they were going to take quite awhile to reach their final destination downstream. We didn't stick around to find out who won the prizes, since we didn't know anyone and didn't buy any ducks ourselves. Because of all the spectators milling about and heading east to watch the ducks (just the direction we needed to go), it took a loooong time to pedal and walk the bikes around them all to get back to the arts and crafts fair. And we had to get back there because Barry had seen a pie stand on our way past in the morning, and well, WE LOVE PIE.These were mini-pies, although they look full-size in the photos. We bought FOUR! Cherry, pecan, boysenberry, and apricot. Yum! Next stop was the fresh tamale stand, where we bought a dozen (smallest quantity they sold) chicken tamales. They were nice and hot! I bet you can guess what we had for a very late lunch once we got back to the motel room. And yes, it was delicious! (Don't worry, we didn't eat all the pies at once; they kept for quite awhile.)
Stay tuned as we head to a very beautiful national park that we bet you've never heard of....
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After our wonderful time on the northern California coast seeing the incredible redwoods for the first time, it was time to start heading east. We had a beautiful drive on twisty mountain roads (no interstates!) enjoying lovely vistas and forests along the way. However, riding on back roads, it can be hard to find a good place to stop for lunch. We'd packed sandwiches so kept our eyes open for a picnic table -- and a rest room! Finally we came upon this nice picnic area in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, right alongside the Trinity River. It was the perfect place to get out of the car, stretch, walk Paisley, and enjoy our lunch. After resuming our drive, we pulled off several times to take photos of the river rushing along beside the road. Photos just can't do it justice. As we got closer to Redding, we got a glimpse of snow-covered peaks in the distance. Once we arrived in town, we checked into our motel and quickly suited up for a late-afternoon bike ride. One of the main reasons we chose to stay in Redding for two nights was to ride the Sacramento River Trail and Sacramento River Rail Trail, but we didn't expect to be able to ride on our first day in town. As it turned out, we had much prettier (and warmer) weather this afternoon than the entire next day, so it's good that we got to take advantage of it. Here's one of the ped/bike bridges over the Sacramento River on the river trail. Barry is the tiny yellow dot on the right side of the photo, getting ready to cross. The rail trail can be accessed at the end of the river trail. There's a 2+ mile connector portion to the actual old railroad right-of-way. The connector involves quite a bit of steep climbing and switchbacks, followed by swoopy ups and downs. Once you get to the actual old railroad right-of-way, the trail is near flat, as you'd expect from a railroad, but getting there is a serious workout -- and one I didn't expect. In this photo, you can see just the beginning of the climb. Once we climbed up high, we were rewarded with beautiful river views and views of the mountains beyond. It was a lovely time of day. We thought this plant was so beautiful, especially as the late-afternoon sun highlighted the silvery green leaves and purplish branches. We had no idea what it was but finally saw a marker the following day (see below) and learned that it is a White-Leaf Manzanita. There are tons of these along the connector portion of the trail. It's getting late -- time to finish up this ride! After the unexpectedly hilly ride, we'd burned enough calories for a pizza dinner. An excellent pizza place was right next door to our motel, so we picked up a yummy BBQ Chicken pizza and enjoyed our new favorite brew, Tangerine Wheat by Lost Coast Brewery, with it. Gotta replenish those carbs! Bringing the pizza back to the hotel, we were delighted by the sight of a beautiful rainbow... ...and, not long after, this amazing sunset -- one of the best we've ever seen. And it was kinda neat to see palm trees again after being up north all summer -- another Redding surprise. Stay tuned...we have one full day in Redding coming up -- more cycling and some delicious local food!
On our last day in Crescent City, we wanted to see more redwoods, but we also wanted to ride our bikes. Problem solved: Barry planned a ride through the redwoods for us! We drove down to the Newton B. Drury Scenic Parkway, the scenic alternative to coastal Highway 101. This ten-mile parkway is in the Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park and is a great place to see redwoods. There are numerous hiking trails intersecting the parkway we would love to check out one day, and thanks to the lower speed limit of 45 mph and ban on commercial vehicles, it's also a perfect place to get a fine bike ride in. At the southern end, where we started our ride, there's an open area in the park before you enter the redwood forest. Although we had nice sunshine in this section, you can see by what I'm wearing that it was not a warm morning. And the temperature in the shady, damp redwood forest felt even cooler. In the open park fields before we entered the redwood forest, there were numerous signs warning of elk, and we were delighted we got to see a couple of them when we first arrived. They were gone later, so we felt lucky that we got to see them. According to information in the visitor's center, it is rutting season for the males, so you definitely don't want to piss these guys off. And don't worry, we weren't as close to them as it appears -- we used our zoom lens! Here I am about to enter the redwood forest. It looks very different in here! The road was still damp in places from rain the previous day and the moist, shady micro-climate. The road starts out mostly flat as you head from south to north. It does climb slightly, but the grade is barely perceptible. However, in the last couple of miles, the road steepens and begins climbing...and climbing. I was really huffing and puffing. When I got to the top and turned around to head back down, I saw why it was so tough without my mountain gearing. The descent was fast and fun, but I had an RV on my tail, so it was a bit less enjoyable than if I'd had a clear road behind. Fortunately, it couldn't go much faster than me on the curves, so I don't think I held them up. As soon as the road straightened out, I pulled over so they could get around me. We stopped to take a picture in front of this huge redwood whose innards were partially hollowed out, and a man taking a break from riding his touring motorcycle offered to take our photo together. It's not so good because of the angle of the sun, but it was nice of him and the only one we have of the two of us together on this ride, so I wanted to include it. We chatted with him for awhile in the parking lot later, and turns out he used to be a bicycle tourist, so I guess that's why he was so nice to us. Here's the Memorial Grove named after the couple who gave the scenic parkway its name. I thought this was a particularly pretty trunk with all the moss growing on it and greenery all around. Barry ended up riding out and back on the parkway twice (would you expect any less of him?) I didn't want to face that climb again so only rode it part way the second time. One monster climb per day is plenty for me! We both had a great time, though. This is my favorite photo of the day. Stay tuned as we leave the beautiful California coast and the amazing redwoods and head inland to Redding!
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Emily & BarryWe're a long-married, early-retired couple who are currently traveling as nomads with no fixed home base. After years of living in North Carolina (Emily's home state), we spent 18 months living oceanfront on Ambergris Caye, Belize, a year road-tripping the US in a Honda CR-V, a year in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, and are now roaming North America in our 32' motorhome, Pearl, following warm weather whenever possible. Archives
July 2019
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