To Oregon and Coos Bay…

The rides in this part of Northern California are breathtaking…!!

Legging it up the 101 towards Crescent City…

Instead of riding directly up the coast, Mark had suggested I ride back towards US 101 and the town of Willits… Once again his advice was spot on…!!

Soon after leaving Fort Bragg, I was whipping the Big Fella down a  tight, twisting road that snaked through low hills and dipped and dived over narrow bridges spanning gushing streams…

Once on the “101”, we barreled north towards Leggett, making good time, ignoring the 65 m/h speed limit and riding closer to 75 m/h…

Most other motorists seemed to follow the same pattern, usually riding about 10 m/h over the limit… This suited me perfectly, as I was able to tuck up behind one of them, and let the miles roll by under us…

I still try to maintain the habit of covering at least 80 km on average for every hour I spend out on the road… If I rode at 55 m/h, I would not be able to do this…!!

Waving long blonde grass alongside US 101… I still find myself comparing the scenery I pass through to that of places back home, and this was no different… This was like the road leading down from the Highveld towards Lydenburg…

Riding through the Redwood Forest just south of Garberville… The best was yet to come…!!

The forest in these p[arts is so thick, that Big Foot might well have been peeping out from behind this roadside stall….!!

I was looking forward to slowing down after tearing up the “101”, and enjoying the scenic ride through this very special place…

I stopped in Garberville, hoping to meet up with a friend of Allan’s who had ridden with him in various parts of the world… Allan referred to him as “Johnny A”, and me as “Ronnie B”, so the meeting of Johnny A and Ronnie B, sounded like a title for a Bob Dylan song…!!

Sadly, Johnny was out of town, and after refueling and leaving messages on his phone, I rode out of Garberville towards the famous “Avenue of the Giants”…

I left the highway a few miles north of Garberville and entered the Humboldt Forest Reserve… We plunged out of the sunlight and into the deep shadows of this scenic route… It runs parallel to the highway for the most part, passing through a few small villages…

Some of the trees along this road are almost 1000 years old and rear up into the sky for up to 100 metres…!! Their bases are wider than the average car…

This will give you an idea of just how big these trees are…!!

I love looking at special trees, be they tall, broad or just shaped in a way that appeals to me… I find myself wanting to stop and touch them, perhaps to feel the energy that must be running through them… Maybe draw from the wisdom they must surely carry… I enjoy imagining the changes they must have experienced during the centuries that they have stood on a single spot…

Big meets BIG….!!

There are a few trees here whose bases have been hollowed out to allow cars to drive through them… They are all on privately owned land and the landowners charge people to ride through them… I much prefer the trees left in their natural state…

Reaching for the sky… The tallest Redwood recorded, grew to a height of 125 metres, and after surviving for more than 1000 years, came crashing down to earth in 1991…

I was awestruck by the size of these Redwoods… The grew straight and tall in majestic splendour…

I stopped on a number of occasions to park the Big Fella in their deep shade, and walk around the base of a particular tree, my boots sinking into the thick mulch that coated the entire area…

Many paths led off into the forest, and if I had the time, I would have enjoyed lying on my back between a few of these huge tress and staring up into their crowns…

They are so tall that their stems seem to grow towards each other high above the ground…!!

After idling along the 30 odd miles of the Avenue of the Giants, I reluctantly took my leave from this special place…

While appreciating the opportunity of having had the privilege to ride through it, I wished that I had not been alone when I had done so…

This was one of those places that needed to be shared…  A place you would one day want to talk about again with whoever you had visited it with…

I still had almost 400 km to ride to get to Coos Bay, and it was well after lunchtime when I got back on the 101 and headed north…

Airstream trailers like this one are quite rare it would seem… Out of the thousands of RV’s that I have seen to date, this is only the second one of these that I have come across….

At one point I passed a highway patrol car coming towards me, and slowed down a touch just before we crossed… Once he had passed, I opened the throttle again, and with Bryan Adams blaring through my earphones, got back up to speed…

A mile down the road I thought I heard a sound that I had not heard on “18 ‘Till I Die” yet… It sounded very much like a siren…!! I happened to glance in my mirror and kissing my exhaust pipe was a big “black & white”…!!

I rolled to a stop, and a rather agitated officer leapt from the car and came striding quickly over towards me…!!

“Did you not see or hear me, sir…!!” he barked… “I have been behind you for over a mile, lights flashing and siren on, and you never even slowed down…!!”

I apologized for the inconvenience I had put him through, and then inquired what the problem was… His eyes narrowed as he mentioned something about “76 in a 55 zone”…

“Licence, Registration and Insurance…!!” he said hands on hips… I had been dreading this part, as I had not yet managed to get Liability Insurance in the USA, despite many attempts…!!

“My Insurance was bought online, and I have not yet managed to print it off my laptop…!!” I explained, handing him the rest of the documents he had asked for… I could see that this guy had far too much starch in his uniform collar, and quickly decided that he was not to be trifled with…

I warned the Big Fella that his exuberance would sooner or later cause problems with the local authorities, but he just wouldn’t listen now, would he….!!

I think in the end my age told in my favour… He was 20 years younger than I was, and the respect I showed for him and the contrite look I tried to convey, convinced him that I was telling the truth… Fact was, I was trying not to smile or burst out laughing…!!

In places the highway ran right alongside the ocean….

He instructed me to wait near the bike while he went to his car and began the process of writing out the ticket… I asked how much the fine would be, and he told me that “the court would decide”….!!

“Court…??” I exclaimed…?? Apparently I would have to call a certain number, explain why I was speeding and then the person on the other end of the line would advise me how much the fine was…!!

I did not like the sound of that one little bit…!! What if the guy/girl on the other end of the line had not had a pleasant night’s sleep the night before, and was not in the best of moods when I called…??

Well, I guess I’ll never know, because I ain’t planning on making that call…!!

Close to Port Orford, this old trawler had been dragged almost a mile from the coast, and turned into a museum on highway 101…!!

In Oregon, they use posters like this to sell beer…!! Very odd…!! I am a bit concerned about the folk in Oregon…!!

Before he handed me the fine, he warned me about the wildlife that I was liable to run into in these parts… Bear, Deer and Elk, as well as a host of smaller critters could cause serious accidents… He mentioned a guy on a Harley that had collided with a bear the year before…

“There were pieces of them all over the road…!!” he said…

“The biker and the bear…??” I asked, grimacing…

“No, the biker and the Harley…!!” he replied, walking back to his car… “We never did find the bear…!! Just a whole lot of its fur…!!”

I made a mental note not to run into any bears…!!

For the next hour I obeyed the speed limit, and quickly realised that if I kept to 55 m/h, I would arrive in Coos Bay well after dark…

So I stopped obeying the speed limit…!!

We rode through Eureka and crossed the Klamath River inside the Yukon Indian Reservation… I was far behind schedule by now and riding faster that I should have, but keeping a very wary eye out for patrol cars…!!

Oregon was the 4th US state that I would be riding in….

I passed through Crescent City and then a short while later crossed the state line into Oregon…

The road ran due north to Port Orford and up to Bandon, and finally at a little after 7.30 pm, I arrived in Coos Bay, a small harbour town with a huge wood chip plant…

Logs from the surrounding forests were being hauled into the plant to be chipped for export… Vessels were lining up in the channel nearby to be loaded…

The smell of pine resin filled the air and reminded me of the sawmill in Swaziland…

It took half an hour to find a place that was affordable and by 8.00 pm I was finally settled into a small motel on the northern side of town…

Parked next to a fellow biker, this one pulling a colour matched trailer…

It had been a long day, and the next one would be even longer… I walked down to a local service station to buy coffee and a sandwich for dinner…

©GBWT 2012