Day Twenty eight: Humboldt to Selma OR
The weather looks like it's clearing, we can kind of see the mountains across the valley now. I fix the fellas a little breakfast, and we're off. The road is precarious due to the 2 days of rain we just endured, and the Girl struggles to get up the road.
We are riding once again through cold fog. After talking with some folks that live around here, it seems that we hit a week-long patch of shitty weather, and that usually northern California is heaven. This is reassuring. The coastal redwood groves continue to be magnificent. The understory of these groves is lush with bright green ferns and moss. The sequoia groves were more dry and piney, like South Carolina.
As we approach Crescent City, our final CA town before we take 299 to the northeast, the sun comes out in a way that feels like “see guys, it's nice here! The sun does come out!”. Whatever. The beach is Crescent City is wide and sandy, most of the coast has been rocky cliffs. We're starving, so we pop into Red's diner. You can't miss it, it's red. They're slammed for lunch and our food takes a little while to come out, the server was sweet and comped us some onion rings. We ordered their world famous burger with secret sauce, and fish tacos. The burger was boring, and if I were to guess, I would say that their secret sauce is mayo mixed with raspberry salad dressing. The fish tacos on the other hand...3 tacos stuffed with perfectly golden fried fish, crispy thin sliced cabbage and a tangy crema. The tortillas were amazing; thin like crepes, grilled and glistening with oil, and full of delicious corn flavor. The service at this place is wonderful too. Oh, and across the street is the Continental Bakery that looks like it has some pretty serious house made doughnuts, and I would have bought dozens of had they not closed at 2. Dang.
Our ride improved immensely after lunch. We rode along the Smith River for about an hour. The sun was shining, the road was full of fat winding curves, and this river took my breath away. The road perches way above the river for most of the way, so you can see down into the water. This is not the muddy chocolate milk river water that I'm used to seeing back home. This is perfectly clear, and when it gets deep, it takes on a brilliant aquamarine. It's like (bear with me) those hobbyist electric train sets that get really elaborate and include mountains and water features? It's the weird translucent blue-green of the motionless water features of electric train sets.
R. Girl has developed a shimmy that has us concerned. It seems to have happened on our way up the dirt road in Humboldt. Plus, we have nearly worn through that back tire. Our mission in Oregon is to get her to the spa for a day. We think we've done over 4000 miles, so she's due. Our time online today has been devoted to finding a motorcycle mechanic. It seems that we will be routing to Bend now, which is great. The Pirate visited there years ago and promises that there is a local gin distillery there that will knock my socks off.
We're camping near Selma, Oregon tonight. We stocked up with food at the local grocery, so dinner is Washington cherries, California avocados, crackers and wine. We got a bottle of the Bohemian Highway Merlot, we think that this is the winery that we could see from Raina's porch. We stay up past dark laughing and talking. A neighbor comes by and lets us know that they've just seen a cougar headed our way. Awesome.
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