South of Cape Lookout I established a wonderful routine of waking up early, running to the beach, stretching, pedaling for most of the day and getting to camp early enough to enjoy the company of new friends. For four nights I found the same four people at my campsites: the two peace corps Volunteers I met at Cape Lookout, another young woman from the Bay Area, and a retired prison guard completing a journey he'd dreamed about for 25 years.
The days blended together, but each had its own extraordinary people, beautiful beaches, friendly towns, and variety of libraries. There was one woman in her twenties who had been on the road for over two years. She had a big, heavy steel touring cycle equipped with a heavy trailer, and she covered about 30 miles a day. "It's not about the cycling," she explained, "it's about the traveling. I used to own a car, but it was always breaking down and costing money. A car just tied me down too much, so I sold it and got the bike." She made a living selling copper bracelets she made while traveling and working odd jobs she found on the way. "Someday I might go back to Montana and live on my cousins farm," she said, "but I don't want to stop traveling yet."
There was a man in his fifties who started touring when he was a teenager. His family was abusive, and one day he bicycled away. He toured for a month that first time, before returning home. But he left on more trips after that, and he's been a cycle tourist ever since.
A pair of couples from the Netherlands showed up on the road one day. The four of them had been going on a bike tour annually for years, in Thailand, Europe and South America. The last one of the four had just retired this year, so they were able to undertake a tour longer than two weeks for the first time, and they were excited to be pedaling all the way down the coast and then heading to the Grand Canyon as well.
Then there was the guy from Florida who had caught a ride to San Fransisco and was moving to Seattle. He had a pet dog, and couldn't bear to leave him behind or send him to his friends already living in Seattle...but this was no problem: the dog sat in a basket on his handlebars, and watched the scenery go by! We bonded a bit over the strangeness of cycling alone for so long, swapping stories about the songs we sang to ourselves, our appreciation for the company of cattle on the roadside, and the frustration of having so many inspirational ideas on the bike but never seeming to remember them at night with our notepads.
I was trying to read up on classes and catch up on this blog as I pedaled down the coast, so I stopped at a library each day. They gave a nice window into the towns: there were nice big libraries with clean buildings and fast inernet, like the ones in North Bend and Pacific City, grungy little libraries with computers that barely functioned, and occasionally a small, wonderful library with enthusiastic staff and a story to tell. Of them all, the Port Orford library was my favorite. Port Orford is a small town--about the size of Haines--but the library is spacious and welcoming. I found books on the redwood parks I was planning to pass through, a book on cycle maintenance, and good internet at the library. Just inside the entrance stood a life-size girl cast in brass. She smiled subtly and held a banner above her head that said simply, "Imagine."
The librarian explained to me that brass girl had been donated, and the names of those 'gone too soon' on the base of the statue represented donations to the library in the name of deceased loved ones. "The statue is a tribute to this library," the librarian said, obviously proud. "it is amazing that a poor town like this can have such an incredible library."
I appreciated the town of Port Orford too. There is a historical park there preserving the site of an old search and rescue station. Ships used to get lost in the fog that often shrouds the cost and end up crashing on the rocks. The coast guard built a watch tower at the top of cliffs near Port Orford that drop dramatically into the sea. The watch tower is gone now, but the view is not. From the cliffs you can see tens of miles down the coast and out to sea. When I was there, the coast to the north was fogged in, so I looked out on a blanket of white. But the south was clear, so I could see down into the bay that Port Orford is built around and marvel at the rocky towers that protrude from the sea.
Through all of this, I met the same four people in camp each night, which gave us the opportunity to swap stories and relive our travels of the day. I got to hear their stories too, of living in villages in Panama and Nigeria, and interacting with prisoners for two and a half decades. We leap-frogged each other throughout the days since we all stopped at different places, and sometimes we pedaled together for a few miles. It was a perfect addition to my traveling: I still had the independence of traveling alone, but the comforting company of people I knew to chat with at night and meet along the road.
With some hesitation, I left the group just south of the California border, at Prairie Creek State Park. As much as I appreciated the group, I had a few extra days, and I wanted to spend them in the redwoods. Prairie Creek was the first redwood park that we encountered, and I chose to spend two nights there while the rest of the gang pressed on. And oh my, what a wonderful place it was to spend a day.
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