Day 45, September 15th 2007 (Mills Creek Redwood National Park,CA to Eureka,CA)

My legs were given a break this morning, for a couple of miles. I woke up with a nice hot shower and a good breakfast. Al and Joan saw me awake from inside their RV and instantly invited me inside. I was welcomed to a cup of hot chocolate for the morning and was able to spend the morning with them. I told them how I was not looking forward to the start of the morning, going straight uphill. They hadn't even remembered a hill as they came into the park, but instantly offered to give me a ride to the top. It just goes to show that unless if you're actually physically climbing a hill, you don't always see everything as it is. We put my bike on board and headed up the 2 mile climb to what I thought was the top of the mountain. At the top we said our goodbyes and they gave me a gift for the road. Dinner on them they said. I thanked them for being so gracious and headed south as they were headed north for a little while. Although I was at the top of the hill that I had climbed up last night, the climb continued. I thought I was already at the top, but apparently I still had a little further to go. It wasn't long before I reached the top and started my descent, but it wasn't my last climb for the day. I was about 10 miles into the ride and the grade of the road changedsignificantly. I felt like I was cycling up the side of a cliff and couldn't beleive how some of the other cyclists pulling some 80lbs behind them were going to make some of California's grades. After a while I reached the top of the mountain summit at 1,485 feet. It was a climb that had started at sea level and once at the top it ended back down at sea level. I stopped for lunch at a little cafe and asked the waitress if she knew what my ride would be like for the rest of the day. I planned on riding for another 60 miles and was ready for anything she was going to throw at me. I had contacted a family from the warmshower's list and they had told me I could stay with them. When the waitress told me that the rest of my ride would be full of a lot of windy roads and hardly any more hills I thought I had it made. My legs were a little tired from the mountain climbs and I was ready for a relaxed ride. When I was back on the road I quickly realized the waitress had no idea what she was talking about. I started out of town up a steep hill and then went into a lot of windy and hilly roads for the entire rest of the ride. The curved roads turned around mountains and there was nothing flat about the ride ahead of me. From uphills to downhills, I was growing tired fairly quickly. I stopped and took a break in Arcata to catch my breath and have a snack at the local university. I was only a few miles from Eureka and the family I was going to stay with. I was back on my bike and made it the remaining 10 miles ahead of me. When I reached Eureka I turned on my phone to call the family and see where I needed to go. I had a voicemail from the family that told me they had another visitor coming over and they wouldn't be able to host me anymore. It was starting to get dark outside and I had just passed a campsite 6 miles north of me. The next campsite I was told was 17 miles south of me and I was left with quite the predicament. I didn't enjoy riding my bike on the freeway when it was dark and so I headed towards a hotel to stay at for the night. I wished I could have saved some money and camped out for the night, but there was nowhere near to make that possible. I checked into the cheapest hotel I could find and was finally able to get a few things done. My laundry hadn't been done for about a week and that was the first thing on my list of things to be done. I was also able to get a nice shower and sleep in a bed for the evening. I wasn't quite sure what to think of the bed because it was so much more comfortable than the ground I had been sleeping on. The bed sucked me in and put me to sleep in a matter of only a few minutes.
Daily mileage: 79.5 miles
Average Speed: 12.5 miles
Total mileage: 2,788.7 miles