Hi everyone!

We just had the longest day. At 7am this morning we set off from our campground at Manchester State Park, and we didn’t arrive at our campground for tonight until 7pm. 12 hours of travel (we did take a 2.5h break at a historic site named Fort Ross) and 112km; a new record on this trip!

Today

Was it tough? Heck yeah! We had a westerly wind, which meant it was mostly pushing us forwards. However, the road was windy and constantly undulating and hilly, with very steep descents and ascents. And if that wasn’t all, the wind was blowing at around 40 km/h with gusts up to around 80 km/h. We’d turn around a sharp corner then suddenly, BAM! The wind would hit us in the face like a wall. Definitely not fun!

The better part was that the scenery was spectacular. We had amazing views of the desolate, rough coast here and each curve around a hill would offer us new amazing vistas. We also had sunshine all day but temperatures were around 16 degrees Celsius so definitely great for cycling. We also realised at some point along the way that we’re past the 1600km mark since starting off in Seattle almost four weeks ago. Wow!

The days ahead

We’ll definitely still go over 1800 but it’s pretty certain the 2000km milestone won’t be reached this trip. Why? Well, if you look the place names we mentioned up on Google maps (or if you’re a geography buff) you’ll see why: we’re getting very, very close to SF. In fact, while we just won’t make our ambitious hompage countdown, we do expect to ride across the Golden Gate Bridge sometime this coming Saturday morning. That’s why we’re singing San Francisco more and more while riding our bikes (“Aaaare you gooooing to Saaaan Franciscoooo – Be sure to weeaaaaar, some flowers in your haaaair”)!

So with the little reception that we get along this coast most of the time, it’s very likely that our next post will be from San Fran. We’ll look for some flowers along the way there!