162 miles, 9.5 hours.

(Tamara posting)

We finally made it into California! We took Highway 199 SW from Grants Pass to Crescent City. The traffic was heavier than we've seen lately, but it was still a very fun and scenic road. There were some nice fast sections marked at 65 with fun sweepers and two lanes each direction which was nice for getting around the RVs. It was hot through there - we were stopped at a construction area and the guy said it got over 100 degrees yesterday. It will be nice to hit the coast again today.

Just as we came into Crescent City it cooled off again. We stopped at Los Compadres, a hole-in-the-wall Mexican eatery that Dean recommended - as expected it was good eats. We had to put on our jacket liners and continued south. Going through the redwoods, the vegetation is amazing, and the trees are so big and tall. It makes me feel like a dinosaur is going to be around the next corner. Ted says he can see why this area is known for its agricultural exports :)

We took a very cool scenic route through Prairie Creek State Park, with about 8 miles of gravel. I did fine on my bike, it felt totally comfortable, and the gravel was a lot of compacted dirt too, so it was pretty easy. We had picked out a campground right on the beach for the night, but it ended up being full - which we at least knew before going 6 miles of rough gravel road - it looked a little gnarly to me. So we headed south further to just north of Trinidad and stayed in a quiet RV park with a couple of ponds and lots of pretty flowers. We headed into town to pick up a couple of things at the grocery store and enjoyed the views there.