Good Morning!!!! 0% Precip. / 0.00 in Sunny. High around 85F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph.
From the sounds of things, a few of you have been making good progress on your projects, then again one or two of you, not so much. Hope everything works out in the end.
Hope Wiper comes home soon, Don. Who's protecting the pasture while she's gone?
And Eric's a grandpa again. Congrats!
My buddy arrived on schedule Friday evening and we settled on a route to the campout for Saturday, after enjoying a nice meal and a few barley pops. Saturday dawned bright and clear, but a bit on the cool side. Our route took us over the Coast Range on Forest Highway 7, a well maintained dirt road I'd enjoyed in previous years. We spotted clouds over the summit, and enjoyed a nice rainbow on the way up, but were totally unprepared for the snow. Yes snow, enough to completely cover the road and eventually stop my forward progress about a hundred feet from the summit. My friend's long legs gave him just enough push to get over the top, and he kindly hiked back to give me a ten foot push so I could follow. A Jeep driver coming the other way chuckled when we asked how far the snow covering lasted, and were relieved to learn only a few hundred feet more. But from there it was rain filled mud ruts, and we pretty much got covered in the stuff, leaving us look like we'd survived a war or something. But neither of us were wet or cold, and by the time we got to camp the sun was back out and dinner was once again delicious. Made a nice day loop the next morning/afternoon, and decided to spend another night there, the only ones there. Asked two local guys at breakfast the next morning if a little squiggle of a road on the map was paved, and were given assurances that it was. But the Pavement Ends sign we found gave us doubts, as did warnings of locked gates ahead. Undeterred, we found the gate warning was in error, but the pavement did indeed disappear, replaced with more rocky, muddy, and rooty ground. But at least it wasn't snow, and after a few miles and some white knuckle moments we were both back on asphalt. We were headed north to a camp on the Lost Coast we'd learned of from a Google Search, and a beautiful spot it was. We just missed the sunset, but still had enough light left to get the tents up and unwrap our sandwitches without too much trouble. Just after dark the wind came up, a warm one, and while we enjoyed the relief from the coastal chill, neither of us cared for the creaking and flapping that made sleeping something of a challenge. Tuesday had us heading a bit farther up the coast to Ferndale and breakfast, then back over CA36 to Red Bluff and south to Chico and home. We just made a one hour opening of 36 between Bridgeville and Dinsmore, something of a surprise that had us and our fellow road users in more of a hurry than was wise on the narrow mountain road. We made good enough time to arrive at the Chico BMW dealer before they closed, though, and David was able to purchase a mirror he'd broken the day before in a minor spill. Both of us welcomed the hot showers and soft beds back at my place, and Wednesday was spent in the garage straightening and repairing some luggage brackets also damaged in the crash. The trip was one of those where every day seemed like it was two days long, and a great way to close out the summer riding season.
