Well, we woke up sticky, stinky and still happy.  We had tried to have showers the night before but the boys waited for the water to warm up and it never did.  We are not desperate enough to have freezing cold showers on a cold night within the comfort of indoors.  So yup, stinky and sweaty like usual.  Porridge as usual.  Pack up as usual.  Hop on our bikes as usual. Sore butts and legs of jello as usual.  First things first, we went to SAfeway and bought mega food and then, at last, we were off.   Actually we were only kind of off.  After 2 min of riding we stopped a t a visitor info center for more maps, then we went to a bike shop for more maps.  You see, riding a bike through a city where the road you want to ride on turns into a freeway every couple of miles and prohibits cyclists without maps is very hard.  The bike guys at the shop said that because of the Freeway rules the strench from here, Santa Cruz, to Monterey involves a lot of wiggling. 

   OH man, the wiggling we did today was outrageous.   Imagine acres and acres and acres of strawberry feilds all jammed full of strawberries and workers picking them.   The smell was delicious.   My dear brother Calen has one of the most limited Spanish vocabularies in history but regardless, he sang non-stop for at least an hour in SPANISH!!!   He sang about strawberries and how he was going to dresso upo like an oso and escape from the tent in the noche and como fraises.  Mucho, mucho, mucho fraises.  Haahahha, he is such a joy to have on the trip cuz he literally sings the most ridiculous, out of tune,  repetative, Calen lingo songs at the top of his little lungs, grinning from ear to ear……and swirving all over the road.  

    Pedeling through Seaside we were abolutely surrounded by armies and armies of car dealerships. If you ever want a car, go to Seaside California, no joke, every car you could imagine was sitting along the road all shimmery with an extrememly inviting gas pedel to the four Canadians limping by on bikes.   Monterey again we had to wiggle, and rely mostly on Calen’s sometimes right internal map.    As we rode along the coast among throngs of people, another rider came up alongside us and started talking to Jodie and I.  He had been studying Hawiian natural medicine for the past three years in Hawia and was biking down to SAn Luis Obispo to visit some friends.   We invited him to add his yellow-bagged bike to our herd of yellow canaries.   We were all planning to camp at Big Sur but the dark came, as it always does, way too early.  We were dog-tired, my stomach hurt, Calen’s knee hurt and Jodie’s legs hurt so when we saw a nuclear silo on the side of the road, we decided to call it a day.  Our friend, Esau, camped with us beside the nuclear silo and we ate spaghetti, boiled from jungle water found beneath the silo, and went to bed.

This morning and hmm, lets see…so far every morning… Jared woke up first and started the water to boil for our deeelicios porridge. The 3 sleeper-inners did not want to wake up but since Jay doesn’t like to sit out there all by his lonesome, I, Jodie Christine Rayner, did my dutiful duty and pulled myself from the warm cacoon suffocating me (well, umm, you see, from day 1 my sleepin bag has had a wierd problem and when i move in it, it doesn’t move nicely with me…just wraps me soo tight like saran wrap that i wake up in the night and can barely breathe and cannot move 1 inch) sigh, ok, anyways. I got out of the tent, and turned around to a scene that we had never seen before on our o-so-cool-and-exciting journey.

There was this bird. There was this little animal. The big bird wanted to eat the little animal. The little animal did not want to be eaten. We don’t know what type of bird it was, but it was probably a falcon, but this little animal on the ground?? hmm, that is a good question. By this time, the action was too exciting that it actually woke the super sleepy falks out of their beds!

 

It ended up that the bird did not eat this little guy and he flew away. BUT…the story does not end there.

This thing…I will call him a thing for now, started moving towards us in a flopping like manner, and we still couldnt make out what he was. Calen thought for sure it was a mole. Jodie thought it was a specie from the rat family. Kinshasa thought it was a shrew. Jared thought it was a mouse…a rather large one.

It came within inches and for the love of mike we still could’nt figure out what in the bloomin blazes was this thing!!?? Within moments, the mystery was solved…

He began to dig. and dig. and dig… and then he came out of his hole pushing the dirt and two big white teeth showing…and then… AAAAHHAAAA! winnie the pooh!! wait, no it wasn’t winnie the pooh himself, but his good friend Gopher!!! Gophy dug a hole for a long time and then eventually went out of sight. the end.

 

Once we hit the road, we zooooooooooomed and flew up and over the hills and were hoping to make it to a town called Davenport for lunch which would be our over halfway mark for the day and also so Calen could find internet to email Emma for her birthday. There was no internet, but we still had lunch, and Kinshasa and I found another Hobo bed down by the train tracks…but the hobo was not there.

oooo, crazy story! this is the second time it has happened. while we were eating lunch, we all suddenly heard a bam! actually it was more like this BBBBBBAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMM!! really LOUD and really SCARY… well super scary for Kinshasa, cause she thought someone was shooting at us! We were all about ready to take cover for our lives when we looked over to where the smoke had settled and realized there in the battleground, lay a tire. blown to smithereens. Twas a sad day to see that Kinshasa’s front tire had blown up again, for no good reason all on its own! geepers, this is the 3 flat tire she has had.

After lunch the sun cooked and baked and cooked and baked and we stopped at a little cafe to fill up our water bottles, then kept on bikin till Santa Cruz.  There, Kinshasa and Jay went shopping at Safeway while Calen went to find internet. during our little 1 hour stay at the grocery store, we had quite a few people come by and tell us how dangerous this next 5 min strip was and how 3 people had been killed in the last 8 months. well, we had to go that way to get on the right road, so we took our chances, and hey! none of us got killed!

we got lost again, and wiggled for what seemed like forever, then finally came upon a kind gentleman riding a bike also who told us where the nearest state park campsite was. we thought we would take a look at prices and see how far the next one was, then keep biking…. we didn’t.

By the time we had climbed the huuuge steep hill into this campsite, we were too tired and hooray, we looked at our km’s and we had reached 100km, so that was the end of our day… and early day…. 7pm.

 

Finally, everyone had a good sleep last night, firstly, because we all got to sleep in our very own beds and secondly, there was not 8 other people in the room to snore and make other strange sounds that could keep us awake forever. We hoped to make eggs this morning for breakfast, but since we found out last night there is no stove in this hostel, we weren’t sure what we were gonna do with them now. they sat in the fridge on a plate and are probably still sitting there… we just decided to leave them and not try to make a mess and cook them, cuz the only way we could do that would be in the microwave… and last night when calen and I made them that way…. yuck. For breakfast, we stuck with the free “1 bagel or 2 slices of bread and coffee or tea and orange juice” for the first part of our morning meal, then brought out ‘ol glorious porridge to finish it off. I think this morning the porridge has never tasted sooo delicously GROSS to all four. It was a hard task to make that goop slide down the throat, but we forced it down nonetheless.

We packed up and made our way out of the hostel, but not before we waited about 10-15 min for someone to help us get our bikes from the dungeon downstairs. It was quite a sight for all the onlookers to see 4 crazy canadians haul up these four bikes – LOADED- with stuff, plus a bob trailer and weasel them out of the place. Wherever we go we explode all of our stuff and take up all the space. It’s not on purpose, of course, but as lots of people say, we just got a lot of stuff!

We thought it would be no biggie to breeze out of town, but hehe, that was a BIG understatement. who would have thought it should take someone almost 5 hours to get out of San Francisco?? it was sheer craziness. We wanted to wiggle through town to avoid these GINORMOUS hills-roads actually that were short and steep but with a nasty grade of probably 15 % incline that made us stop every 100 feet to catch our breath so we wouldn’t explode our heads- now, why should our heads explode?? well kinshasa and I were so concentrated on the hill that we forgot to breathe and would unconciously hold our breath trying to get up the hill (hence why our heads felt like exploding) anyways, in the process of taking a right here, and a left there and so on, we found ourselves with no map and not an idea how to get onto the number 1 hwy. We finally got so sick and tired of gettin nowhere that we asked someone for help ( wow, why didnt we think to do that earlier!!??) to our dissapointment, we were on the wrong side of the peninsula and had to do a lot of backtracking to get back on track….then as we were going to leave our frusterations behind and jump onto the number 1 hwy, the sign tells us we can’t go on it!! whaaaa! To our relief, after about an hour, we found an alternate route and for the how manyieth time we were actually able to get onto hwy 1 and from then on we cruised into the evening with good road and great speed.

We surprised ourselves and made waay better time and arrived at this gorgeous state campsite at a place called Half Moon Bay right on the beach (but this time our tents got to camp on grass and our bikes and gear did not get covered in sand) and once again, the price was right, so we set up our tents and tried to dry them out from the campout at smiley’s beach where they got all sandy and gross and wet. And I know this is no surprise to you guys, but we had spaghetti again for supper. But it was extra special, cuz I cooked it. Probably Jodie’s first time cooking a meal on this trip. and no, i am not a slacker, my job always seems to set up the tents, so this was a nice change. While making supper, the other 3 saw this amazing sunset so they went running off into the horizon to frolick in the sand and get wet and take some really nice pictures which i havent seen until now. This night, we all settled into our soggy sleeping bags and tents and everything and layed our heads to rest until we have to wake up for another day on the pedals.

 

It was so cool to wake up in a room packed with bunk beds filled with girls from Korea, Germany, Australia and other countries. Calen and Jared were in a room with 12 bunkbeds, 24 people and at least a dozen notes in the symphany of snores. Calen came and knocked on our door at eight because our plan was to get up, eat breakfast and find a church to fellowship in this morning. Bad news arrived with Calen’s knock. The hostel was full for tonight and we were no able to stay for another night as we had agreed upon late the night before. Soooooo…..we spent the morning packing up our bags, loading our bikes and made a b-line downtown San Francisco to a different hostel that may have room for us if we got there soon. No joke, we rode along the main streets in downtown San Fran complete with crazy bus drivers, tons of cars and oodles and oodles of people. We were quite a site; four young people, decked out in riding gear with matching bikes, bright yellow bags, a Bob trailer sporting a Canadian Flag swirving in amoungst the lanes of traffic. It seemed as if every head turned, every eye saw our Canadian flag and every mouth dropped wide open. So many people rolled down their windows at stop lights and exclamed, “did you guys actually ride all the way from Canada?”. Well, we made it to the downtown hostel and to our surprise there was an empty room with four beds, (only four beds!!!), just for us. Phewwfy. We could actually take our long awaited day off after eight days of hard riding. The one downer was that by the time we had secured our place for the night it was one in the afternoon and church services would be over. We were so stoked to be in such a huge city on our day off and it was a really drastic culture shock because only two days before we had been woken up by Mr Sherriff in pirate town. Same world? It was hard to believe. We spent a bunch of the afternoon roaming the streets; being as we are Black Creek stingy hillbillies we didn’t buy anything, just roamed. Actually we even loaded up Jodie’s bag with groceries and ate our crackers and bananas in the food court amongst the throngs of people.

Now for the moment we had all been waiting for…..Narnia. For ever and ever we had hoped to see Narnia, Prince Caspian, on its opening night on Calen’s Birthday. It hadn’t worked out since we had been “bushing” it most nights and traveling through small towns of two or three hundred people. Now at last was our chance…….and we did not pass it up. After the movie we were starving, like usual, and the only grocery stores in the downtown malls were organic; we all know organic=expensive beyond comprehension. Therefore, we found the best bang for our buck and each had a huge plate of Korean rice and BBQ meat. Fun, fun, fun….so yes we did splurge a little on our San Fran adventure. Sigh, it was a beautiful feeling having our very own room, with beds and showers and the whole sha-bang of regular comforts. Our shin-dig consisted of chocolate pudding and lots of laughs topped with a generous amount of Canada Dry. There was one discomfort gnawing visciously at every cell in my body, begging me to lie like a possum, throw in the towel, curl up in the street for ever….our room was up FOUR FLIGHTS OF STAIRS. My legs burned with every painful, burdensome, agonizing, muscle throbbing step. Ok, goodnight, we went to bed and slept like chickens in a hen house, like peas in a pod, like sausages in a frying pan….( wait a minute I had better clarify…..like four sausages in four SEPERATE frying pans)…. like toe jam between toes, (seperate toes), like tadpoles a puddle, like a ticks in a sheepskin, in otherwords, we were cozy in our beds………….separate beds.

What a relief to not have been woken up again, and we had slept last night peacefully after our sherriff visit.

We opened our tent to a cloudy, drizzling day and packed up our super duper ooper sandy and wet EVERYTHING. We hustled out pretty fast so we wouldnt upset any more people, but not before taking a secret snap shot of our dear drunk friend. hehe, he was just around the corner, and flat out cold, sleeping in a super soggy sleeping bag on the sand with no tent or nothing. such a pitiful but funny moment to look at.

We biked and biked and came to the base of the mountains that we would have to climb to get into san fran. there we bought some really expensive food and bananas, ate some beans in a park with birds, then moseyed on up the mountains. We were in no rush to get to san fran, and because it would be our day off tomorrow, we clicked our bikes into granny gear and slowly and like a granny, climbed those mountains.

We descended like rapid fire into mill valley. stopped for a short break, then wiggled all through town to try and find the Goldeny Golded Gate Bridge. It is quite a rather large monument, and you can see it for miles, but to actually get there is a whole new story for the direction challenged, mapless canadians.

Voala! we made it. took some pics in front of the magnificent bridge, then rode across! IT WAS SOO COOL and JAMMED WITH PEOPLE!!!

We thought we would ride right through the city and find a campsite just south of the city for our day off, but San Fran is HUGE and we aren’t allowed to ride on any of the freeways. After much confusion and standing around (something we like to do a lot) we found a super cool-sweet awesome youth hostel. But it was full. so we loitered outside the door for about 2 hours until the ”emergency rooms” became free for all for the boys to take. hurray!

By this time we were starving and needed some quick food, so we took a walk to the nearest safeway…1 min away… and loaded up MAJ HARDCORE.

There was this cool kitchen in the basement and we made tons of food and feasted like Kings and Queens while listening to jukebox music with some Australians and Brits, and a whole whack of other nationalilties.

lovely evening and yummy food that made our tummies happy  

   

  Guess what we did today???   Hmmm, that is a hard one hey? 

We woke up and rode our bikes.   We rode all day, like usual.   It was a piping hot day again and we were pretty much out of food since Jenner had been less than incapable to supply us with groceries!  We stopped in Bodega Bay and bought food as well as treated ourselves to a honey dew and chocolate peanut butter brownies.  yummmy yummy yummmy, the most delicious thing we had put into our mouths for a very long time.  As we were sitting there eating our honey dew, a nice man from the kite shiop accross the street walked over and gave us a big bag of handmade salt water taffys.  They were yummy also but Jodie and I kinda overdosed on them and they soon became not so yummy. 

   We had a long lunch break where Calen posed for many self shots and then rode on.  When we entered Point Reyes we decided to do our gorcery shop there instead of the original plan of Olema.  Good thing!!! We soon found that Olema has a population of 55 people.  To top it off, we passed through Dog Town with a Population of 30!!!  Yikes.    Again, we had no place to stay.  After talking to some locals they all suggested that we ride into Bolinas and camp on the beach.  Bolinas felt like a pirate town that hadn’t changed for 100years.  Everyone we talked to said that we should go and check out Smiley’s, the bar.  When we rode passed the bar there were a dozen “pirates”, hanging out on the split rail porch, all drunk already at 6:00pm, and they yelled at us to “turn around, and come back” as we rode past. 

   The Beach had a sign saying that there was no camping allowed on  weekends but we had no other place to stay, the locals passing by said it was no problem and it was getting late. 

 

OOOhhhhh so exciting.   We we snug i our beds, fast asleep.   The ocean waves gently lapped along the shore and the night air was still.   All of a sudden a big voice broke the silence.  It was the Sherriff, “Hey, you guys all have to pack up and leave, there is no camping here.  There is a camp ground 10 miles North”.  It was midnight and we had been sleeping for almost three hours already.  The Sherriff and his crew were standing outside our tents.  Blurry-eyed Calen poked his cute little head out of the tent and said, “ummmmm, wer’re on bikes, do you have any suggestions”.    After waking up all the other tenters on the beach the Sherriff came back and pulled Calen aside, “since you guys are on bikes,” he said, “you have to just ‘pretend’ to pack up your stuff until the other campers have left.  Then you can go back to bed”.   Hahaha, it was very humerous.  we randomly through things around, ate bananas and went back to bed. 

 

Annnd Good Morning World!

Well, you see, because we were tight on water availability from last night, we saved our spaghetti/corn water for porridge this morning…. sometimes you gotta do some wierd things, but hey, we had to eat. The porridge wasnt too bad at all and the interesting looking water didnt change much of the taste either…besides porridge is becoming less and less appealing every day, so a little change to the taste made it a little more interesting to eat.

We packed up in record slow time, but also because just yonder beyond the fence was a angry bull. He didn’t like our Berg jackets or us for that matter, and every time he caught a glimpse of us, he would start scraping the ground with his hooves and making strange sounds. Thankfully, he did not get too upset and break through the flimsy gate and come charging our way.

Once on our bikes, we made excellent time to the town of Gualala and decided to make a much needed phone call home. Our parents were very grateful for that. The couple-minute phone calls turned out to be much longer, so we voted on having lunch there on the pavement, by the phone booth.  just as we were leaving, we needed to fill up our water bottles and who would have thought someone would refuse four thirsty cyclers water?? the worker at this particular chevron! We rode a bit, then filled up water a few blocks down at another grocery store…bless their little hearts, that they even had hearts to let us get water.

We assumed the rest of our day would continue to be as successful as the rest and our super strong legs would speedily carry us to our destination…  but they did not. For some reason, after lunch, we all feel like slugs, and it takes a while to get going again.

Our legs stayed a tired only for the fact that the terrain completely changed, and we headed into the mountains right along the coast. Up, Down, Up, Down, Up, Down, and etc.. the veiws were spectacular, but we were becoming o-so-tired of climbing these hills, which were more like small mountains. The crazy thing is that as we came ripping down the hills, on one corner, right along the cliff and on the edge of the road were a flock of cattle! Kinshasa stopped to stick out her tongue at one who was doing the same to her, and calen took the photos. Such a crazy way to farm, and such little maintenance…let the cows free range all over the cliffs.

We got to Jenner and can you guess? there was nothing there! so we rode on. what a joy and a blessing to stop at this beautiful beach campsite that just appeared almost out of nowhere. and.. the ranger gave us a deal to camp for $12! one of our best sites yet:)

twas a good night with iceberg lettuce as our dessert

This morning we awoke with three words on our minds: food, laundary and internet.

Number 1. Food

We had a deliciously scrumpious five course meal. Usually Jay is the first one up, by at least 15 min, and he puts the water on to boil for the porridge, but this morning Jodie and I pitied the invalid and were the first to rise and shine. We served the boys bananas in bed and then made a breakfast stir fry with the left-over rice, cheese, eggs, sausage and we even had salt and pepper. Then, for course three and four, we had fried eggs and pancakes respectively. Finally, for the grand finali we each chomped an apple. I think we were actually full after breakfast this morning.

Number 2. Laundary

Yup, this was definitaly a priority because, as you can imagine, our riding clothes stink after about half an hour of riding and we had worn these for six whole, stinkin’ days. We loaded our bikes and head back into town, for the second time thanks to Calen We did laundary in a laundary mat, it was the first time for all of us and it was very exciting.

Number 3 Internet.

If any of you are mothers or have girlfriend you will probably understand why this one was so important. It had been a looong time since we had had any contact with all you lovely folks back home and our mothers, I am sure check our blog and facebook page at least four times a day, so we figured it was about time. For some reason, internet was extrememly hard to come by in Fort Bragg so we sent Calen back ( again) to the other side of town to the seemingly only spot with free internet access. Jay, Jodie and I longed around on the grass outside of starbucks and Jodie stuck the pole with the Canandain Flag from Bob Trailer in her helmet. It reached up into the sky about three feet and we were entertained during our wait by the astranged looks we recieved from the “starbucks regulars”.

After hitting up Safeway for yet another grocery shop we finally left the City of Fort Bragg at 5:00pm. Phew, we couldn’t believe how long everythig takes to do in town. We had planned to do a half day and good thing too, because the wind was a-howlin’ about a gazillion miles per hour. The road was pretty scetchy because there was literally no shoulder and it wiggled up and down the cliffes along the ocean. As we would scream around a corner on our bikes the wind would whack us so hard that, if it wasn’t for the sheer weight of our massively huge calf muscles, we would have surely been blown off the cliffe into the watery depths below. The area was very remote and we passed by only a couple dots on the map such as Little River, Albion and Elk, barely recognizable as towns. As the sun began to set we encountered a delema…….where to camp. We were exhausted and the bush looked very inviting but simce it was all fenced off and pretty much everyone in the States walks around with a sawed-off 22, we didn’t want to risk being caught on private property. To top it off, there was a hill. Now listen carefully, this wasn’t just any hill. This hill was steep. This hill was steeper than the steepiest steep. This hill was so much steepier than the steepiest, steepier, steepen’ steep that we all dismounted off our trusty steads and pushed our stubborn mules up the hill…..the hill was steep. It was a steep hill.

We made it to the top, with our calves just a burning. Even thought the countryside was deserted apart from the cows, there were no bushes to hide behind and no government property to sqaut on. Finally, as dark was setting in, we came across a house in amounst the grazing cattle that actually appeared to have people living there. Calen and I went to the door and were greeted by about eight pairs of big curious eyes of a hipanic family. We asked permission to camp on there property and through the translation of the eldest son, were told that we could camp beside the big red barn. Hooray, we had a place to stay, and we were actually ALLOWED TO BE THERE. Spaghetti and bed, did you expect anything else:)

 

We arose bright and early to the sound of semi engine brakes roaring as the came down the hill that was beside our “campsite” or bushsite. Breakfast consisted of porridge yet again, wow we eat alot of that stuff and more is yet to come, and some wholesome Tootie Fruities, mmmmm.   During the morning packingJared pumped up the underdeflated tires that we had been riding on for the last 1500 or so km. (I guess its the last thing novice riders think about untill their legs are worn, tired, and they are thinking “there must be some way to help us make the trip easier).

   We had just begun our long trek up the mountain when,   KAPOW!!!! my tire EXPLODED. Just like that, BOOM, there was a HUGE gash in my tube.  So far I hold the record of a total of two flat tires….I win.

   The riding today was so super duper rough.   After Legget we came to that fatal fork in the road where we made our fatal choice to leave the comfort of our dear old 101 and venture into the wild domain of the number 1.  The moment we pedeled our first pedel on the Number 1 we began to climb…..and we climbed and we climbed and we climbed.  The road switchbacked up a mountain with twists and turns so narrow and steep that it sucked the strength from our legs and sent fire into our muscles.  It was hard…real hard…but then….we reached the top….and the danger began.   No one had ever mentioned to me that road biking is an extreme sport but as we screamed down that treacherous mountain with intensly sharp corners, no shoulder alongside wild and crazy drivers, it became the most extreme sport in my history.  Many times I just about didn’t make the corners and thought my life would soon be cheese-grated onto the pavement.  What a pitiful ending that would have been.  Well. happy to say, we made it.  Then we climbed another mountain of equal pain….and screamed down that one as well. 

    We arrived at our final destination, Fprt Bragg, did our routine grocery shop of porridge, bagels, bananas and the addition of RICE!!  Then, since we weren’t sure if there were any RV or campsites south of the town we turned our bikes around and headed back North.  Calen was convinced that we had passed an Rv Park just as we entered Fort Bragg.  The rest of us were not so convinced and became less and less convinced as we rode on and on, farther and farther from the northern scity limit against the strongest wind we had plowed up to this point.  Literally, the wind just about knocked me off my bike many times and stirred up the dust.  jodie was laughing so hard that she drooled all over her face, producing the perfect gooey medium for the dust to stick to.  Finally we found the RV site that Calen was so sure was “close” to town and started making supper. 

   Just as the water was almost boiled a huge gust of wind knocked over the BOB trailer that we had been using as a wind block.  CRASH!! The entire pot knocked over and boiling hot water soaked Jared’s leg as he had been at the picnic table.  Rapidly he exploded into the air, yelled, danced around and then whipped off his pants.  Jodie and I were in our tent changing from our spandex and as soon as we bursted out to save the day Jared realized that he was “pantless” and did the most magnificent head frist, double pretzel dive into his tent!  Jodie, the first responder grabbed a water bottle and started dumping  water over his leg while he was in the tent.  Then in her great big emergency voice commanded him to “Get out of The Tent”!  Calen and I grabbed the rest of the waterbottles and in the excitment I ended up dumping gatorade all over myself as I ran to the tap.  After the dust settled and we had been running back and forth with water we realized that we should just move Jared to the tap.  smart idea hey?  Miraculously Jay was not burned at all thanks to the grace of God and Jodie’s oober fast “First Responder” water dumping.  We started supper from scratch, ate the spilled chili of the ground and went to bed abosolutley exhausted.

How lovely, no one found us in the night, so we were all able to sleep peacefully…  well, somewhat, because the highway was like 50 ft away from our tents. Porridge graced our bowls yet again this morning for another nutritious meal to help power our legs full of energy so we could climb any mountain that might come our way. Per usual, Calen was the last out of bed and being o-so-pokey…. Yet we still had to be very careful and somewhat slower than usual due to the jungle of stinging nettle that gave us a whole lot of stings throughout the short 24 hours we were there. It is a tricky task trying to take down camp… but that is not so odd for our team of four… we are four very special people, who typically spend our days in the weirdest of places. This just adds to our list.

Now we were making some excellent time in the first little bit of the morning, but then we came upon a sign…” Ave of the Giants” which meant we could take a scenic route opposed to the sizzling 101. The only prob is that we think we will still make great time becuase now we are riding in the shade….wrong again! the scenery tends to slow us down a bit and make Kinshasa many times more hungry, so istead of making like 3 short stops in the morning and afternoon, this day, we made 4 or 5 looong stops complete with a meal in the morning.

One of our breaks was at the famous drive-thru tree. We paid a whopping $8 to see this beauty and took some great pics…all in cyanotype. Calen couldnt understand why all the pics were looking a bluey color, then he finally he asked why they looked that way…all is good, we straightened the camera out. There were also these really cool treehouses made out of one whole tree each, and tunnels that even let us go up the second level in the “house.” soo neat and creative. The boys really like the heart shaped windows.

By 2pm, the sun was a blazin and our bodies were a burnin and the river just below us was a callin, so… yet another swim we could not resist. we took the afternoon off, and had lunch and swam for like 3 hours…but we did get back on our bikes. We didnt realize our planned campsite was soo far away and as we kept riding, the sun kept sinkin. soon we found ourselves riding almost in the dark and did not want to re play our first eve in port angeles. Thankfully we found this lovely forest FULL of HUGE redwood trees with a perfect little cove for 2 tents and 4 exhausted bikers. we set up, made spaghetti…with white sauce tonght! and ate some Tootie Fruties (aka…Fruit Loops)  until we could eat no more Tootie Fruities. oooo….oooooooo…..oooOOOOO. and the MOSQUITOS!! there were miiiiliiions of them. and they all buzzed around calen and I. Gross. How nice it was to crawl into our sleeping bags at the end of our eve and zip those blood suckers out. Good night little mozzies!…