Day 445
Just us and the bears
We survived the night and no vampires were seen. I slept a full 14 hours and felt wonderful. Tom having ridden an extra 24 very hilly miles wasn’t feeling quite as fresh!
Today we were on Route 101 pretty much all the way. It’s the road most touring cyclists take down the West Coast all the way to Mexico, technically it carries on right down to the bottom of South America, so we hoped to love it. Well, one full day was pretty good. Traffic really eased off in the afternoon and we were both hopeful that starting after the kids have gone back to school would mean a lot quieter roads. We found a campsite right by the beach, almost as good as Second Beach!
The following morning it was back on Route 101. In the town of Forks I replaced my much loved bowl-come-container. About 2 weeks ago it split and last night it finally gave up the ghost. I now have a nifty collapsible bowl which I’m sure I will come to love. This may sound a weird thing to mention but our kit is our world.
After a very speedy 20 miles we had a choice. Stay on 101 or head into the Indian Reserve Forest. The entrance wasn’t barred so off we went. Oh if only we had know what lay ahead. All went swimmingly for the first hour. Zero traffic, just us two. Finally a fire service van passed us, we got a friendly wave, very reassuring as we weren’t 100% it was a legal right of way. About an hour later we saw a van coming towards us. The driver stopped, concerned we were lost. He had never seen a cyclist in these woods before. He reassured us we were fine to be there and departed with the advice ‘Just stay on the main track and you will be fine’. Heard those words before dear reader? The film An American Werewolf in London! You remember how that turned out!
Within minutes of our last human contact of the day the track forked. Right said Garmin but the main track went left. Now why would we listen to local advice when we had world beating technology at our fingertips? So right we went. On and on, we plunged deeper and deeper into the woods. All was fine, until it wasn’t. After 3 hours of relatively good tracks, Garmin said go left. The track clearly hadn’t been used for many a year. However it had a good surface under the greenery barring our way, and though we could see an alternative route on the map it added miles so off we went.
At this point I did wonder what the condition of the track ahead would be like but was confident it would be fine. Well, fine was pushing it but to start with it was rideable. I was even enjoying it. When I led rides mountain biking in our local forest I had a reputation for leading my riders down trails that really needed a machete to clear them first. It was clearly payback time and I was loving it.
We came upon a mound of earth but decided they had just done that to block the trail and all would be fine once past it. We crossed a stream, another pile of earth, both of us working together to get each bike past each obstacle. We knew this trail was about 5 miles long, and as we were then confronted by a wall of trees, decided to retrace our steps. It was at this point that I realised that actually though Tom and I might have been the only humans to use that trail in many a year it was still a well used path. There was bear scat everywhere. Gulp! Don’t get that in Dalby!
It seemed to take forever to retrace our steps but finally we were back on a better track. Now at this point it occurred to Tom and I that if we could have one dead end then maybe there might be more. We avoided eye contact and pressed on. We saw just one bear but enough scat for several hundred. I mean why wouldn’t they live here? No one ever comes this way! Our longer way out went on and on. Up down up and down again. Slowly though it also got narrower and overgrown. We ploughed on. Finally we reached the point where according to Garmin we would turn left onto a forest road and freedom! Only it was a dead end. We were 35 miles and over 4 hours of riding and had just descended a very steep hill. There was no way we could retrace our route before darkness fell, we would have to camp in the forest, just us and the bears!
Tom turned right onto a track that Garmin said was a dead end, hallelujah it wasn’t! On we went. It led to two tracks, both dead ends at a river according to Garmin, we took the left one and hoped for the best. I can’t quite describe my emotions as I rode along, I could see on my Garmin the end of the track approaching, then the track ended, but only on my Garmin, on the road it went on! We just about flew over the river barely needing the bridge, our relief gave us wings. It was another good few miles to freedom but we knew we were going to be OK!
