August 16 - Honeydew
Lodging: Eureka, CA
Today I felt like a contestant on the American Ninja Warrior show. 😀 Although I didn’t make it to the final bell, I made a decent showing and had a blast! I headed north from Garberville and traveled down the Avenue of Giants. The large redwoods were magnificent (see picture of me and bike on the road). Then I went west through the Humboldt Redwoods State Park with the intention of doing a loop on backroads through the small towns of Honeydew, Petrolia, and Ferndale. This is where the adventure began. First challenge was lots of hairpin curves. Those were fun (my GPS looked like a Richter scale readout of a large earthquake). Next, I noticed that the condition of the road rapidly deteriorated. It was clear a variety of people over the years had vainly tried to patch up the potholes. But the problem was there were many sections with more patches than pavement (see sample photo). Next I encountered gravel and dirt road construction but soldiered on. The next obstacle was a one lane dirt and gravel road with a stop sign that read “proceed when clear.” This was great advice. But both times I saw this sign it was imposssible to see if the road was indeed clear because it went around a bend. However, I took a deep breath and kept going. There were a few spots with some pretty vistas song the way (see photo). The next challenge was a one lane bridge made out of wood that wasn’t evenly nailed down (see bridge photo). I gamely road across, bouncing up and down and praying none of the loose boards were sticking up enough for my wheel to catch on. I finally entered Honeydew. The town seemed to mainly consist of one building that housed a post-office, small supply store, and “cafe.” There were about ten grumpy people waiting for food who all informed me they had been there over an hour. I sized up the situation and decided to make my own lunch from the supply store using a frozen burrito topped with fresh avocado and salsa. I was eating five minutes later. After lunch, I got back on the bike and thought “wow - I made it this far. What could be worse?” A few miles down the road I encountered another one of those one way roads with the sign instructing me to “proceed when clear.” So I gingerly inched around the corner, only to come face to face with a steep downhill dirt road littered with golf ball and lemon sized rocks. Just as I braked to assess the situation, a four wheel drive truck came around from behind me and fishtailed down the slippery slope. That was when I finally realized I had to turn around. If the four wheel drive truck couldn’t make it down the hill without slipping I knew I wasn’t going to make it either. It was quite tricky turning around as my nose was already facing downhill at this point. I was bummed I couldn’t do the whole loop but grateful that the bike and I were okay. The good news was that going back the way I came I knew what to expect. Also when I got to the State Park that I had driven through earlier in the day I realized I had plenty of time to explore. So I went on short little hiking trails to the “Tall Tree,” “Giant Tree,” and “Flatiron Tree”. All in all, it was a great day!
