Day 12: Fortuna to Leggett, CA

August 11, Fortuna to Leggett, CA

76 miles, 13.3 mph

At Eureka, US101 heads inland and never makes it back to the coast (OK, maybe near LA). To return to the coast, you have to follow US101 up to the town of Leggett, where it intersects US1 which heads back to the coast and takes you to Ft Bragg and Mendocino. The downside of this trip is that Leggett is in the mountains at about 1100 ft. The trip up to the mountains--as you might expect--is full of that phenomenon you'd call rolling hills--that is, if the hills weren't so high.

The day was both physically and mentally demanding. Physically, because there were so many steep hills. Mentally, because the traffic along 101 was fierce and also because some of the steep descents on the shoulder of 101 with strong gusts of wind over 100 ft bridges were somewhat disconcerting. After the first hour or so, the fog burned off and we had sun. The Hawaiians (everyone but me) enjoyed the heat. I like the sun. But, the heat coming off the highway was intense at time.

We crossed various branches of the Eel river at least a dozen times on our climb. In Fortuna, there was almost no water visible in the river. By the midpoint of our journey the river seemed to recover and had a healthy flow. We saw swimmers and picnicers on the sides of its banks, enjoying the day. We pulled off the highway near Weott and took our only sightseeing break to bike along a 6 mile stretch of "Avenue of the Giants"--a gorgeous trek thru a beautiful, shaded set of redwood groves. This led us to Miranda where we had a great lunch at the small town's only cafe.

At this point, we had about 30 miles to go to reach Leggett--most of it uphill. The good new was that, while Mark had worked everyone into a frenzy of concern about the final 850 ft climb to reach Leggett, the final ascent wasn't really so bad. The bad news was that there seemed to be 3 or 4, 300+ ft climbs in between. We took those slow--except Amy. While the old men of team Palooza were getting slower and slower as the days took their toll, Amy seemed to get faster and faster every day. She seemed rather unphased by the day's workout and had far surpassed me in her hill climbing abilities a day or two earlier. Clearly, she was some kind of energy vampire, stealing energy and stamina from the men.

Our lodging was about 3 miles away from the US101/US1 split. The Stonegate Villas were a charming group of rooms set back in a forested area of Leggett, on a road that had previously been US101, before they laid the new highway. The proprietor, Mike, was a really nice guy who drove us to dinner at Pegg's Grill, took us to the market and drove us to the "drive-thru" redwood--kind of the signature sight in Leggett. Today was my birthday (I had never expected to have to work so hard on my birthday) and my wife, Jenny, had arranged for brownies with candles to be served after dinner at Peggs. It was sunny, 75 degrees. We were eating outside on picnic tables. It was a nice way to cap off a challenging day.