From Northern California to Southern Oregon

A shot of some epic clouds - we've finally been seeing lots of them since we
left California!

We've been a bit isolated for the past week, so we've got a bit of catching up to do here on the blog.  It's my (Daisy) job to write about our on route adventures from Tahoe City, CA to Ashland, OR.  My, there is a lot to say.

For the entire week between these two places we were booking it - I think that our 'slowest' day was 68 miles, and our longest was 96.  Yikes!  After the numerous and epic mountain passes of Southern and Central California, this northern stretch was relatively mild.  We saw sooo many pine trees!  The national forests seemed to go on forever, but luckily the logging traffic was not too bad.  

There was one final big pass in California that we were really looking forward to in Lassen Volcanic National Park.  Our story of this pass is really quite a tale...

A distant view of the volcanic Mt. Lassen

We planned to ride to the base of the pass on Thursday, and then do the climb and descend on Friday.  The ride to the base was very nice, curving around a rather large Lake Almanor.  We even got to ride along a curvy bike path for quite a while right next to the water.  At the end of the road around the lake we turned to head towards the park... only to see the sign on the road declaring that the pass was still closed due to an extreme accumulation of snow and ice.  No!!  We immediately called my father to do the online detective work to make sure the sign was right.  He confirmed it.  We called the park information line.  It was after hours, so we just got the recorded message saying that the pass was closed and that it was to open sometime in the next week.  Great.  We wanted to call again in the morning, so we decided to camp nearby and try again.  We found a spot in what turned out to be the towns flood control canals, whoops!  No rain though, so we were fine until morning.

Riding in the flats.

In the morning we woke up and rode to a nearby town, Chester, where we got coffee and a cinnamon roll and checked the website.  The picture on the website showed multiple miles of unplowed road, and the message on the information line was the same.  We were sad, but decided to take the road around the park and continue north.  The new route was nice - flat and fast and nearly traffic-free.  The miles flew by, and before we knew it we were around the mountain and back on the route.  Before descending to the route though, we stopped at a beautiful overlook that gave us clear views of both Mt. Lassen and Mt. Shasta, two huge volcanic peaks that dominated the skylines in either directions.

At the intersection with the original route we turned to go buy chips in town and saw... a road sign saying that the pass was OPEN.  Ack!!!  Apparently they hadn't updated the message or the website, and had opened it that afternoon.  I had a little meltdown on the side of the road, and then we pulled it together and bought some ice cream as a (pathetic) consolation prize.  There was also a 'book swap' where we traded in a few of our already-read books for some new ones.  We limped on down the road for another 30ish miles,  trading extra miles for the disappointment of a missed pass.  Luckily, a wonderful surprise was waiting for us at the State Park where we were planning on staying.

Our wonderful bike touring friends in Burney Falls State Park.

The surprise was not a nice view of a waterfall, or a pleasant hiker-biker site (although both of those things were there too), it was another pair of touring cyclists!  We got to share a site and some wonderful conversation with Eric and Sophia, a Swedish couple who decided to leave their modern lives behind for a year to ride their bicycles and get a new perspective.  They were fantastic - friendly and funny and full of just the kind of cycling stories that kept us chatting into the night.  We talked about all the crazy things that happen on bike tour - it's like a special language that only people who've done it can decipher.  For example, how luxurious a picnic table can be.  The real kicker though... they had come over the pass denied to us - a whole day before it had been opened to cars!  They got a tip from a local; tour guide about sneaking past the barricades.  The video they showed us looked epic - the snow was piled at least 5' high next to the road, like they were riding through a canyon of snow.  We had such a good time talking to them though that we were ok with missing the pass.  If we had ridden it, we may never have met them!

Closed... to cars...

We continued riding north towards Oregon, into rather isolated countryside.  Finally we actually ran out of side roads and had to ride (uphill) on I-5 for 8 miles across the California - Oregon border.  For you East Coasters, I-5 is the border to border massive freeway of the West Coast.  Lots of trucks, not much fun for bikes.  Yet, we had no choice, so we did it.  We left the freeway at Oregon Exit 1.  Yay for riding across the entire state of California!  We had one more big hill to climb until descending into Ashland.  On the descent the road was closed, but emboldened by Eric and Sophias story of Lassen, we continued on.  We found that the road had been washed out by a landslide, but it was easy to walk the bikes across and snap a few pictures with the machinery parked there for cleanup.

Mt. Shasta!  Huge!

Ashland was a funny little artist's town, known for it's Shakespeare Festival, which actually runs for 8 months of the year.  Ha!  We got a room in a funny little hostel run by an artist couple.  The woman was horrified that I didn't know the name of some (apparently very famous) poet.  I should have asked her if she knew of any famous statisticians... I bet she would have not even known Gauss.  Oh well, different worlds I guess.  We met some very kind people at the local Co-op, and one man suggested a tasty Thai place for dinner.  We went there and, hungry as all get-out, ordered three entrees.  They were all delicious!  Most incredibly, another couple at the restaurant was so inspired by our bike tour that they paid for most of dinner, without even telling us! Thank you to those nameless folks, we will someday pass on the favor.

We slept in an elementary school play yard with this excellent map painted on the ground.
They were kind enough to have painted in only the states we were riding across!

Daisy is tired and cold!  Time to REST!

The next morning we climbed a pass heading north, but only 30 miles into the day I was exhausted.  We found a campground with only 6 sites that was closed, and we stopped to read for a bit.  When it started to rain we decided to stay the night and rest.  Good thing too - the rain refused to stop.  It was so insistent that when it came time to make dinner we ended up cooking in the vault toilet stall, as it was the only dry place.  After a quick call to my dad, who informed me that there was nothing but rain for the next 10 days, we fell asleep to the insistent sound of raindrops.  This is the part of the story that Jason (next to me at the library in Bend) is typing even now...