et in arcata ego

here we are at michael and wendy's in arcata, california. it's a town of about 12,000. humboldt state university here. it feels like haight ashbury of san francisco downtown--lots of greasy warm hearted nappy headed hippies walking around, looking kind of dazed but optimistic. plenty of cafes and cheap mexican and a great bookstore.

michael and wendy live at about twelve or so minutes from downtown, traveling by bike. two ginormous hills capped off our 45 or so mile day yesterday. but a sauna, built by michael, awaited us. also seclusion and warm beds. they have two dogs, weasel and lucy, as well as a rooster and chickens. the rooster crows in the morning and it sort of makes your day, if you're a city boy like me. speaking of the city, it feels weird to be back among so many people--we went for two days without cell phone coverage through the redwoods (the "trees of mystery" and "the avenue of giants"); through two towns--Klamath, pop. 827, and Orick, pop. 640. there was a theatre marquee in orick that said NEIL YOUNG, and I asked the waitress at the diner there what that meant. she said, "well, if it says neil young, he must be coming," filled up my coffee and strolled away. I called my dad and found out he'd be in san diego friday (we were 600 or so miles from there) and by god, I thought, it seemed possible he'd be there. turns out it was a joke. anyway. my dad thought it was pretty funny.

here are some pictures; looks like dinner might soon be served for us here.

on the right there is battle rock. apparently in 1850 some white guys tried to take this area--the town of... I can't remember. gold beach, maybe? we camped that night at mt. humbug.



leaving mt. humbug park in the morning. you can just see brent on the right side of the road there. the next few pictures are us on the way to brookings, california (I think.)



here's a picture on the wall of a pizza place in brookings. called "wild river pizza," I think. they were also a brewery. it was basically valentinos with no buffet plus a brewery. here's the "gourmet pesto chicken" pizza we had (which was rather tasty and eaten quickly). the table next to us was a little girl's birthday party, and the special, incredibly american birthday treat was a whole bunch of cupcakes in the shape of a unicorn (three and a half feet long, one and a half foot wide) and it was ALL, and I mean ALL OF IT, it was all absolutely covered--three or so inches thick--with frosting. pink and white frosting. tried to get a picture but it was blurry.


the tall order of the day after brooking was a 4.4 mile, 1600 foot climb through the first section of the redwood state park. it's that huge foresty mountain thing in the background, there. for scale, you can just barely see brian on the left behind the surfer standing behind the truck. you really have to zoom in. but cycling up to that thing--incredibly intimidating. as you can see, it was sunny. about 68 outside. once we got insidc, it seemed like sunset and we lost about 15 to 20 degrees. ewoks loved, fought, and died in this forest in a galaxy far, far away. that is, they filmed part of return of the jedi there. or whichever one it was. the next few pictures are from that 8 or so mile stretch (4.4 up, the rest down). they could have been better--but I was working my ass off to get through. took an hour to get through all that.


here's us at the beach afterward. me and brent rode six more miles to get beer and wine for everybody.




there's our campsite the next morning. half a mile from the hostel.
there's where we camped next--after another hill.




this is us just getting into arcata. then you turn around and keeping going, and you see this:

the rooster in the backyard. he means business.