I biked ever upward through more redwood forest, 1200 feet of climbing at a painfully slow pace. Then finally I took the rapid descent, passing two cyclists puttering their way up from the other side. At one point as I heard a semitruck seeming to take forever coming up behind me, that ominous roar of its looming presence dragging on worryingly, it took until after it passed for me to realize that the reason it had taken so long was because I was very nearly at the maximum speed of 30mph that it was allowed on that downhill slope. At the bottom I reached The Trees of Mystery, with its giant statues of Paul Bunyan and his Ox and some other silly nonsense I wasted no time on. But while it's mostly a tourist trap, one which I might have simply passed by completely if I hadn't been told better by last night's host, hidden away in the back of the building is an incredibly impressive, surprisingly free museum holding an enormous treasure trove of Native American artifacts and art. There may well be no denser display of so much varied art from so many different tribes anywhere else. For all my need to keep moving (though looking at the sky at the time you'd have no indication), I had to stop and take my time looking through it all, and taking way too many pictures.
After that it wasn't long before I had a relieving period off the highway in another Redwood forest, Prairie Creek Redwood State Park. It was yet another climb to get into the park, but then it was mostly a gradual downhill through it. I stopped a few times to marvel and to take pictures of my bike in front of the huge trees. I also took a moment to go off the road a short ways to see the aptly named Big Tree, which is indeed one really big tree. Then with a surprising suddenness, like a curtain lifting to a new scene, I was out of the woods and into prairie. Supposedly elk frequent the area, but I regrettably didn't see any.
All day I found myself struggling with my jacket and finding a balance between hot and cold. I'd be overheating on the uphill and in the sun, feeling chill on the downhill or in the shade or the wind. It was astoundingly frustrating. And as the clouds increased in the sky, I feared how much colder the cold would get if I was soaking wet. So I pushed onward, taking less stops, pressing harder, as I made my way around a series of three lagoons and up one more climb. There were a couple drips here or there as I came into Trinidad, a little town advertising its population as 311. I came to my host's door, and no more than five minutes after being let inside, it began to pour. I beat the rain, by moments.
I was able to get a nice shower and get my laundry done, while my wonderful host prepared dinner for us and her other dinner guests for the evening. We had vegetarian pasta, salad, some delicious black trumpet mushrooms, wine, and then cake and maple nuts for dessert. It was a nice dinner, with interesting conversation with a group of older, well-educated individuals. I was obviously a little out of place...but then, I usually am in most mixes I find myself in, so it was nothing new there.
Tomorrow I head on for Fortuna, with a stop in Eureka on the way to get myself new tires before the mountainous sections ahead. It'll almost surely shower on me, but hopefully not rain. And after that, it should be getting sunnier from there out. We can hope.
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