The food was delicious and I wasn’t mistaken for an Aussie.
Todays target was literally a town called Eureka. It would be the final stop in California and, the way the weather forecasts were shaping up, possibly a final day of uninterrupted sunshine.
Elliot had mapped out another cross country route that maximized twists, turns and coastline.
The route turned out to be every bit as good as promised. It was another day of vineyards, orchards, forests and the Pacific Ocean, a truly wonderful experience.
What was very noticeable was that fatigue was creeping in. Apart from the short day to Monterey, the pace had been pretty relentless. The gaps between stretch stops were getting shorter which in turns extended the day as time we had to get back to Vancouver on the Sunday. Having said that, fatigue was soon forgotten by Elliot when there was a a stretch of bends ahead. Despite only having the bike for a couple of months, Elliot handled it really well. I was often left to make more sedate progress on the Ducati listening to Elliot calling the bends over the comms.
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After another full day in the saddle (I can’t even remember where the lunch stop was) we arrived at Eureka around what passed for rush hour. Fortunately the traffic was heading out of town so we didn’t have to focus on cars, just motel spotting. Once again hotwire turned up trumps and the small private motel was comfortable and included the all implant hot shower. But where to eat?
Elliot once again found a local restaurant, Bless My Soul, true southern US fare on the north west coast. It turned out to be another inspired choice. The food was delicious and I wasn’t mistaken for an Aussie. There can still be the tendency for folks on the west coast who haven’t been exposed to too many accents to assume that the English speaking visitor must hail from Australia as its ‘close’.
As with a lot of places stopped at, there was no real time to get to experience the area. Although Eureka gave the impression of experiencing better days there were some interesting buildings and it’s the built environment that I somewhat miss living on this continent. Without much in the way of visible human history, finding the occasional building that makes one stop and take a second glance doesn’t happen too frequently.
Six days down and a big decision was made. The original intent of the trip was to ride back up the Oregon coast. Having ridden two-thirds of that coast in 2010 I knew it would be a great ride, but only if the weather was right. As it happened, the forecasts were not encouraging. So, we decided to maximize the dry and would head back inland over the mountains and back to the I5. That way we would get one extra dry day, and after the dousing on day one, the thought of two days of rain didn’t appeal.
