9/8/18 – Eureka to Phillipsville

60.2 Miles

1896 ft Climbing

A good part of the day, today was in yet another Redwood Forest, and it did not disappoint.

Leaving Eureka, the traffic was terrible. I have good tail lights, radar and a mirror, so at no time was I in danger, but riding in Saturday morning traffic, with no shoulder, will never be fun. Once I broke out of town, life improved immensely. I first rode along Humboldt Bay, then, after passing Lolita, followed the Eel River for the rest of the day.

This is the river crossing into Del Rio, a cute little town, where I stopped to buy pink lemonade from a couple of six year old girls.

Across the Eel River again, I stopped for lunch at the market in Scotia, which since the 1800s has been a lumber mill factory town, built by Pacific Lumber Company, which is now bankrupt. The lumber mill is massive–approximately a mile-long complex of sawmill buildings, log piles, cut lumber, etc., with more logs piled up on the hill on the other side of the road through town. Now owned by Humboldt Lumber Company, the sawmill is still active. The company built houses are all pretty much identical to each other, with a few different models for various pay levels of employees, and the legal process is currently underway to subdivide all the land with houses on it, so the people who live in them–employees and retirees of the mill–can actually own them. Wouldn’t that be great?

Shortly after leaving Scotia, I I rolled into the Humboldt Redwoods State Park and began cycling the 32-mile long Avenue of the Giants, the picturesque roadway through the park.

Within the park is some privately owned land and a few little towns. These two trucks were parked in front of a little off-the-grid “compound” of people who live in tents and ancient camp trailers.

Below is my favorite wood carving yet.

Sorry. To you, the two pictures below may look the same, but to me, they are distinctly different. Don’t want to forget the treetops.

My last shot at dinner was the restaurant in Miranda, a little resort community three miles from Phillipsville, where I planned to spend the night. I stopped at the Avenue Cafe, and was seated at a table by myself. The place was packed, so when a couple arrived and needed a place to sit, I offered them a couple of seats at my table. My dinner mates were a young LDS couple, Robert and Crystal Rogers, from Vacaville, CA. He is an Air Force C5 pilot, and she is about to graduate with a Business degree from BYU Idaho. Congratulations Crystal! I enjoyed talking with them, and hopefully our paths will cross again somewhere, someday.