We Break for the Pacific Coast - Days 2 and 3 - 365 miles

Over 2 days to coast 365 miles, 2 mountain ranges, wonderful scenery, trees, rivers and mountain lakes - but rain up high.

Even though visibility got poor later - we drove along some beautiful valleys















Take a look at the views from the Iphone video camera attached to my helmet. Camera aimed slightly too low - better next time! Duration 3'




 
Bob takes up the story -

"Well, it couldn’t be postponed any longer.  We either had to start the trip or decide to do something else altogether.  I checked the weather on our route up though Lassen Volcanic National Park and down into California’s Central Valley and it looked like we were definitely going to hit rain as soon as we entered the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  And we did.   Fortunately, the height of the mountains in this section of the range is significantly lower than they are in the area south of our route.  Last year we went over 10,000+ foot Tioga Pass in Yosemite Park.  


This year our highest pass was just over 5,000 feet.  The lower elevation meant that the rain was much warmer than it would have been and our trip as pretty pleasant even with a fairly steady, if light shower most of the way.

It began to rain more heavily as we began the assent up to the entrance to Lassen Volcanic Park and we could feel the temperature dropping and we started to ride directly into the clouds.  It is exactly like entering a fog bank and the visibility and temperature both drop dramatically.  It was still daylight and although you could not tell where in the sky the Sun actually was there was enough daylight so that visibility was not a serious problem.  Not a problem in seeing the roadway at least, there was nothing in the scenery category on offer however since we could not see anything beyond the first line of trees.

LUNCH STOP GOOD MEXICAN FARE


























We stopped and the turnoff for the Park Entrance and talked about which was we should go.  The road through the Park is a very twisty, steep and narrow two lane which snaked up the side of Mount Lassen and then down the other side and ends up again in the Central Valley only slightly north of the town we would reach if we continue along the road we are already on.  The Park road reaches an elevation of just over 8,500 feet and I was concerned about the possibility of the rain turning into snow as we climbed higher.  The temperature at the entrance was only in the low forty’s (+5 Celsius).  I was also concerned about the breathing at that level.  The volume of air and thus the amount of oxygen available decreases about 3% for every 1,000 feet of elevation so there would be about 10% less oxygen at the high point than there was at the Park Entrance.  I think I would have attempted the Park in any case except that the visibility was so poor that I feared the only thing we would remember of the Park was riding through a long and cold cloudbank.  Surprising myself, I recommended to Eugene that we give Lassen a miss.  He was amenable to taking the coward’s way as long as he could blame it on me so we headed down into the valley instead of up into the clouds.

Our next day’s weather is much much better and we are hopeful of a sunny day after the dreary one yesterday.  We are not disappointed and we get to enjoy the scenery of the costal range on our way to the Pacific.   Here again the mountains are not of high altitude and we are treated to a lush and verdant series of rolling hills and tortured valley which our two lane back road twisty back and forth following the hillsides.  This is how roads used to be when they were built with the idea of conforming to the land and not driving though it.  Today’s roads take advantage of the relative ease with which dirt can be removed and deep cuts or tunnels made though the ridges rather than crawling up to the top and then down the other side.  The new roads are smoother, faster and probably safer, but they lost something significant along the way.  That may be the way of many new things in our world.

Once again, I take the easy way and stop 60 miles short of my intended destination.  We spend the night in a typical low-end motel, a few miles from the pacific Coast, in Arcata California.  

Tune in soon for the next two days - some amusing interviews as we travel up the coast through Redwood National Park - we encounter the biggest tree in the world, a herd of Elk and BIGFOOT!

TOTAL MILES TO DATE  - 440