9/9/18 – Phillipsville to Westport

61.2 Miles

4642 ft of Climbing

With a great night of rest, in a little cottage in the Redwoods, in the tiny little town of Phillipsville, under my belt, I loaded up steed and hit the road.

About 11 miles down the route, I was passed by a speeding fire truck en route to a fire. Another mile down the road, as I approached Graberville, a Sheriff’s deputy was arriving to join the fire truck, then as I passed, more emergency vehicles arrived. A range fire had just started in the dry brush that lines the forest in that area. I didn’t have time to sit around and watch how it went down, but I didn’t hear any news on it, later, so they must have been able to control it.

The scenery of the day was what we would call high desert, in Arizona, tourist attractions, and more Redwood trees.

No, I didn’t stop at Confusion Hill to find out what is so ‘historically interesting,’ there. Just not that curious, and definitely not in need of more confusion than I already grapple with on a daily basis.

And here is where things started to change. After a couple of ridiculous climbs, outside of Leggett, I descended out of the Redwoods and passed the terrain below, with trees blown permanently eastward. And then the road turned, and I was on Highway 1 following the coast. And I mean, right on the edge of a cliff following the coastline.It was Sunday, so there were a lot of people cruising in their hot cars, motorcyc;les, antique cars, etc. I’m pretty sure this Porche and Bugati were waiting for me to take my rightful place with my legendary vehicle. And this is where I met Joseph Silva, who volunteers a couple of days a week with the Deported Veterans Support House in Tijuana. After talking to him, I may get involved with the organization, when I get back home. They help veterans who served in the US Armed Forces as citizens of Mexico and other countries, but later were deported, because they never had time to complete the citizenship requirements and get their US citizenship. Many of them didn’t have time to work on it, because they were deployed to the Middle East doing grunt jobs. What a great cause!It’s always fun talking to folks along the way, but I had to get down the road to my campground, which, this evening, was going to be the Westport-Union Landing State Beach. As I pulled up, I noticed that not only were there no showers, but the toilets were composting toilets. No way. I draw the line at running water. So I peddled down the road to the next lodging I could find, which was the Westport Beach RV Park and Campground.

And this is where I met my new friend Karen Gray, a marine biologist on an adventure of her own. She is headed up to Samoa, which is across the bridge I rode into Eureka on, two days ago. She’s going to help set up kelp and shellfish growing operations on the site of an abandoned pulp mill I rode by on the weird Google Maps reroute I took that day.

We had both arrived just minutes after the staff left the check in office, for the day, and were reading about self check in, when we figured out that both of us were traveling alone. We agreed to split the cost of a campsite ($46) and camp on the beach together. And we’re talking about having the entire beach to ourselves. There are about 15 beach campsites, but we were the only ones there, which was awesome.

We worked together to set up camp and cook dinner, then had an enjoyable evening of girl talk. Karen is an endurance athlete of another variety. An open water swimmer, she had clocked a 2-mile ocean swim that morning. And she’s a life coach, too, so I’m sure she was working her magic on me the entire time, and we were both being entertained by each other’s lives and the things we have in common. Hopefully, we’ll cross paths again, someday. Can you see our tents and my bike in the above photo? Once our campsite was all set up, the sun set on another lovely day.