French toast was on the menu again since we had some bread and eggs leftover. We also had a lot of fruit to eat. We were slow in leaving as we vacuumed and tidied up to try to make it better than we left it. The watermelon was particularly juicy, and we ate about half of one and packed the remainder.
Our first ride was about 35 miles to Scotia, which was a town right before the avenue of the giants, a section of road off of the 101 giving good views of massive redwoods. We had to stop several times along the route to tinkle, and we didn't realize until later on that it was from the extremely juicy watermelon. Stuff was good though.
We rolled into Scotia and stopped at a market, where we finished off the watermelon and got more food. We ate outside in the beautiful weather. The next 30 miles of riding would be through a forest of redwood trees. We saw thousands of thousand year old trees along the entire road, and it turned out to be a very lightly trafficked alternative to the 101. Again, it was a very peaceful ride. We stopped in a section where we saw probably the largest ones of the day and took some pictures. 
As we approached the end of the avenue, we ran into a few familiar faces getting some food at a pizza shop. It was Andy and Melissa again 
. We had caught back up to them after falling behind on our day off. They had already eaten, but weren't going much farther on the day. We kept on going up to Garberville from there, which was another 11 miles or so.
We stopped and ate at a Mexican/Italian place, weird right? While we were eating, I called the Hosbein's, family of Meghan's that I know well, who live in lovely Petaluma California to let them know we would be rolling into town soon. They were excited to have us in a few days.
We left the restaurant with the hopes of covering a few more miles since we had a nice climb ahead of us for the following day. A night time tailwind balanced out the difficulty to see, however after less than 10 miles we decided to call it a night. It was a good riding day for starting after noon.
As we found a spot in a pull off well off the road, a few officers came and asked us what we were doing. We explained and they said they would let it slide as long as we got out at a decent time in the morning and put the tent up in a safe spot far enough from the road. We obliged, and in no time were ready for bed.
Tomorrow would start with our most difficult climb remaining in the trip over Legget hill. But we were in sunny California and loving it.
Life was good.
Another blog! This is my lucky day!!!
Paul looks like a pimple on the trunk of the tree. It is hard to tell how really large they are from a photo. You keep mentioning “sunny” California. I did not realize you were a sun worshiper like mom!!!!