The full route: Victoria-Portland-Tijuana-Grand Canyon-Flagstaff, 3850km/2400 miles
The night before we left: Beers were had, and the amazing thrift store bike shorts onesie was shown off.
Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed outside our front door, optimistic about the adventures ahead.
Two blocks from home, my optimism was crushed when I couldn’t ride my loaded bike. Trying to make the ferry, I frantically emptied my water carrier at the side of the road and shifted my gear around.
After a shaky ride through downtown Victoria, we made it onto the ferry. Kini kept her helmet on, just in case.
To America!
Day One included a winding, shoulderless ride next to Lake Crescent; there were signal lights to alert motorists that we were on the road.
Lake Crescent, WA
Our first campground, at the edge of Lake Crescent, ended up being closed. We stayed there anyway.
Boy Scout Supper
Yep.
The second night, stealth-camping in dark, creepy woods, very far from any town.
Day Three, exploring Ruby Beach in the rain.
The sun came out; it was amazing.
Drying off.
Another closed-for-the-season campground, South Beach. We picked a scenic site and celebrated the sunshine.
Soaked and shivering in Humptulips after a day of relentless rain. Of note in this photo: 1. The wet spot where I was sitting. 2. The heavy-duty dishgloves that Kini bought in Queets that morning to waterproof our hands. 3. The first of many, many sandwiches consisting only of yellow mustard and convenience store bread (dubbed the Solid Kini in a nod to the bike adventures of Mike Erwood and Tom Stoops).
Entering Hoquiam felt like going 60 years back in time.
Amurrca.
We splurged on a motel room in Hoquiam to dry us and our gear off. To get our money’s worth, Kini depleted the waffle batter supply at the continental breakfast bar.
Raymond, WA
A highway-side campsite in South Bend; we partook in the local cuisine.
This went on those soggy waffles from earlier.
We spent a morning at an artsy cafe in South Bend.
We chose the bicycle table.
Not a real oyster.
The landscape past South Bend reminded me of New Brunswick.
It’s all a cycle.
The Willapa National Wildlife Refuge.
Spot the Bicycles.
There were salmon in all the trees.
Cape Disappointment. We snuck past the gate to see the lighthouse before open hours.
And cooked breakfast and coffee in the parking lot.
Kini showed an obvious disrespect for U.S. property.
Later that day, we made it to Oregon…
…by crossing this terrifying bridge into Astoria. Very narrow shoulder, high winds, heavy truck traffic.
We faced our first mountain climbs heading from Astoria to Portland.
Portland was so good to us. We ate a giant box of Voodoo Donuts.
I snuggled with Mac, one of our furry hosts.
We ate at food carts.
Oh, the food carts.
We went to Tryon Community Life Farms, where we were allowed to camp at the back of the property and use the outdoor kitchen…
…and hang out inside the Tea Whale.
Nehalem Bay State Park
The first sand dunes! Sunshine!
Our guidebook’s promise of free cheese samples led us to the Tillamook Cheese Factory. It was Spring Break and it was chaos, but we went on the self-guided tour and attacked the sample station.
CHEESE.
The view from Cape Meares.
The lighthouse at Cape Meares.
Mindy, the (self-appointed?) guide at Cape Meares took this photo of us. She was having a blood sugar crisis so we gave her our peanut butter. She gave us stealth-camping tips for the area and we ended up on a perfect unused logging road for the night.
The Octopus Tree
Big Cedar
Kini made friends.
We did a steep climb over Cape Lookout, and found ourselves in this on the other side. This was also where we met Node, the first other touring cyclist we met on the trip (we were his first, too).
We rode with Node for the rest of the day and camped with him that night; we all cooked dinner over a beach fire while the sun set.
Kini and Node, fire-starting.
We ate amazing homemade food at this hidden gem…
…and had fancy coffee and pastries at this one.
We biked to high-up places…
…and stopped at every lighthouse. This one was called Yaquina Lighthouse.
Newport OR
The Marine Science Centre in Newport.
For a stretch, everything was named for the devil; Kini loved it.
Devil’s Churn.
We hiked up to the Best View of the Oregon Coast!
IT WAS STUNNING.
Heceta Head Lighthouse, at Devil’s Elbow (Touring the coast was also an accidental tour of places mentioned in Decemberists songs).
We legitimately became Fresnel lens enthusiasts.
We visited these carniverous plants.
I didn’t trust them.
We played in the sand dunes. Kini rolled down one and gave herself a stomach-ache.
We shared the beach with the plovers.
Umpqua Lighthouse
We learned about some strange whale mating habits.
Kini started putting whipped cream in her coffee…
…and buying me brie wheels to eat with crackers.
At first we were excited to see steller jays, but quickly realized they were campsite pests that would steal our food if we turned away for a moment.
Seven Devils Road consists of seven brutally steep hills (i.e. the ‘devils’). Somebody marked the pavement so that cyclists could track their progress.
Kini was attacked.
We found a 1950s roadside attraction. Admission prices were steep, so we enjoyed these highly realistic dinosaurs from the roadside.
We found these feral cat homes.
We made it to California! It was almost immediately warm and sunny.
So warm and sunny that Kini wasted no time combatting California’s sexist toplessness laws.
Suddenly, there were redwoods. We biked Howland Hill, where they came right up to the road.
Kini went into a tree.
“Sara, come on!”
Looking up from inside the tree; it was hollowed out by fire, and you could see right through the top.
A one-armed Paul Bunyan.
“Paul Bunyan’s an asshole; I just want a photo with Babe.” -Kini
Julie texted me often to make sure I hadn’t been eaten by bears. I punched this one, to show her that they didn’t pose a threat.
Turkey vultures everywhere.
The Corkscrew Tree
A dead-end on the way to our campground; the bridge only exists in the summer.
Jedediah Smith State Park; we had the hiker-biker site to ourselves, and got to sleep right next to these redwoods.
This was in the food locker. Important to know: California exterminated all of its grizzly bears in the 1930s and they now exist only on the state flag.
We met a lot of cyclists who had their iPhones mounted to their handlebars. This was my Google Maps.
Kini got comfortable at Elk Prairie Campground.
WHICH ONE THOUGH
Avenue of the Giants.
A classic roadside snack break.
Kini found everything that she loves in windchime form.
The sign at the top of Leggett Hill, notorious among West coast touring cyclists as the highest climb on the coast. Kini added her stamp.
The other inscription reads: “55 mins Bitches, Fully loaded! Pet Haus + Dr. Richard Kimble”. A few days later, we found another inscription that might shed some light on who these characters were; stay tuned.
After Leggett Hill, we biked through some ghost towns.
We saw this car that had been driven off the highway and fallen down into the forest.
Take a long drive with me (California One, California One)
You could see the effects of sliding everywhere.
Mendocino in the background.
Pretty standard views from Highway One.
Sea Ice, a beautiful but terrible invasive species.
Not quite spelled right, but…
Gualala Point Regional Park
We hiked to this pygmy forest…
…full of these 70+-year-old trees that you can wrap your hand around.
An important lesson from bike-tripping: No matter how badass you think you are, somebody has always done it harder. We connected this to the note at the top of Leggett Hill (see a few photos earlier), and are fairly sure that Pet Haus was the man and Dr. Richard Kimble was the cat. A Google search brings up nothing; all I want is to know more.
Milestone!
Tim from our campground the night before took us on a tour of the Bay and shepherded us over the bridge.
Bicycle traffic signals!
We couldn’t get enough of the steepest hill.
We slept inside, in a bed.
Grace Cathedral Hill (I continued to be a nerd about Decemberists lyrics).
Apparently this building features prominently in Interview With a Vampire.
These pictures don’t fully capture the experience of going to the Castro. We visited the Queer History Museum, saw a double-feature at the Castro Theatre, where an organist still rises up out of the floor at the beginning and end of every film, and we sat in the old Twin Peaks bar and talked with some of the long-time residents of the neighbourhood. One of them, Garry, talked to us about the Harvey Milk days, about crossing 32 friends out of his Rolodex during the AIDS crisis while the government did nothing, about the commercialization of this place over the years.
One of Kini’s many sweet bike tour outfits.
It started getting deserty.
I got this vest around the California border, in the ‘Hunting’ section of the grocery store.
Camp stove breakfasts.
Whenever someone asked if we had been ditching unnecessary items along the way, we laughed and showed them this coffee percolator that we picked up after two weeks of terrible instant coffee.
Monterey CA; these labels were embedded in Cannery Row.
Steinbeck and his characters and Kini.
I generally chose the worst spots to have flat tires; Kini’s first happened a block from the ocean in Carmel-by-the-Sea.
More Highway One views.
Hiking around Big Sur.
Two years ago, Mike and Tom were blamed by the police for starting this fire, due to their bicycles being found in the vicinity. These pictures were taken to shame them for the damage that they caused (Note: they did not actually start the fire).
Look at what you’ve done.
Collecting jade bits at Jade Cove.
Elephant seals.
A whole beach of elephant seals.
Majestic.
700-year-old oak trees at Los Osos Oaks State Reserve.
Solvang, a Danish town surrounded by remote California countryside.
At the top of San Marcos Pass, before descending into Santa Barbara.
Cactus, or giant asparagus?
We hit Santa Barbara; even the 7-Eleven featured Spanish architecture.
The Santa Barbara Mission.
There was a chalk festival.
“For Neko” -Kini
Bazzt, did you have to?
On the way to L.A. we stopped for a lovely picnic under these machines of war.
There really was a picnic area, and a rocket and missile display, with plaques detailing their impressive killing efficiency.
A peaceful early-morning moment on the beachfront bike path in Los Angeles.
Kini modelling her knitchanchan cycling cap.
Famous places.
Famous places.
We got doughnuts in Long Beach. For PATRIOTISM.
(I’m just going to take this moment to say how lucky I am to love this badass fearless beautiful human who broke stupid laws for two hours in a fucking scary city in a state full of fucking scary cops. Kini, you are actually the greatest.)
The 4-minute Balboa Island Ferry. The red bike belongs to Carl (not pictured here), our wacky self-appointed guide through the southern part of L.A.
After an 85-mile day through L.A. we arrived at Doheney State Beach and followed the signs to the hiker-biker site, this empty lot wedged between the bathrooms and the road. Right after this photo, the park ranger came up and said, “So, uh, we’ve recently made some changes to hiker-biker…”; we laughed, and then he took us to the real site, which had grass and a picnic table.
Grapefruits at the neighbour’s house in Escondido.
Some public art in San Diego.
The day we biked to the border, I hit an old streetcar rail. Ten minutes later, a crazy driver right-hooked me (this was my only injury and only near miss on the entire coast).
Glam shots, all sweaty at the Mexican border.
“This can’t be right.” At this point we thought we were lining up to show our passports to enter Mexico. In fact, we’d crossed into Mexico when we walked through a turnstile (where nobody checked i.d. or asked questions); we had promptly joined the line to re-enter the States.
Back on the American side, we ate celebratory cactus tacos in a fast food joint owned by a family from Tijuana.
The taste of a failed border crossing, but a successful coastal bike ride.
From San Diego we turned inland, and pretty quickly it was all desert.
It got weird.
The fence on the right is the literal American-Mexican border. All of its securty measures exist on just the one side. We’d been on these tracks for about three minutes, just looking, when a border patrol vehicle came by to check out what we were up to. Further down, we started seeing big jugs of water scattered all over the hillsides, left there for those who do successfullly make it over the border. We left one of our own, too.
It was striking to see the border in such a remote place, where the landscapes are identical on either side; a rusted steel fence and racist immigration policies between them.
This was the Hardest Day: 65 miles of brutally hot desert with no towns, services, or shade. We carried 30L of water between us and started riding at 5AM.
There were drastic landscape changes; we saw a few types of desert in one day.
The heat is getting to me at this point.
We were all about the Powerade and eating salt by the spoonful.
Kini befriended this saguaro cactus.
Hope AZ, home of a gas station and an exceptionally wonderful R.V. park, with a shady shelter for bicycle travellers.
The R.V. park in Hope.
Prickly pear cactus.
Cryptic underpass notes.
Desert towns.
The only queer-owned breakfast joint in the 650-person town of Yarnell, AZ.
The travelers’ hostel in Prescott, AZ. We fell in love with this place; we stayed; we made friends; we led the coziest mini-life there. It was so hard to leave.
Eve, the inn-keeper, who kept us fed and laughing, told us stories, told the future.
Nicole, who joined us for multiple meals at the Old Crow and tours of the farmer’s market and antique stores. On our last night there, we got the 90s kids’ games off the shelf and watched The Fifth Element.
We broke down in the remote town of Paulden, AZ; Kini’s wheel needed to be replaced, but not before she tried everything possible to fix it herself (see the next photos). Cristina rescued us off the side of the road, let us sleep on her lawn for three nights, drove us back to Prescott to get things repaired, and stayed up late chatting with us on the porch, watching movies, and eating pizza. We were so lucky; we chose the right place to have a bicycle disaster.
Trying to get that new spoke in past the cassette, not that a new spoke is actually going to make this any better.
It’s almost in.
Yep, good as new.
Gregory Peck crowed outside our tent each morning.
Goldie Hen on the left (every single chicken had a punny celebrity name).
Williams, AZ, riding on historic Route 66.
It was full of old roadside Americana.
On the way to the Grand Canyon, we stayed at Flintstone’s Bedrock City. It was literally everything we had hoped it might be.
Yup.
And then the Grand Canyon.
Kini’s ready to hike the South Kaibab Trail, unfazed by the extreme heat warning beside her.
I’ll park anywhere.
Eating salt right from the shaker.
Camping with RVs, Flagstaff.
Kini’s Prescott AZ antique store treasure.
Our last breakfast, at this genuine old Route 66 diner.
Boxing up the bikes for the Greyhound in Flagstaff. This was a sad moment.
That night, the bus spat us out onto the streets of Vegas for 3 hours. GAMBLING.
We found craft beers and people-watched (I have never seen a better place to people-watch).
Fremont Street. The giant overhead TV screen was playing a Bon Jovi concert and people were going nuts, like they were actually at a Bon Jovi concert.
Ferry-riding on the last leg of the bus trip, between Seattle and Port Angeles.
The next day, we boarded the ferry home to Victoria.
Our first stop was Floyd’s– same place we always go, same thing we always order.
