Prairies to Pacific: Copey Rides West

The answer to the detour or not to detour question is... 🥁 🥁 🥁    🚊   After having such an easy time on the coast compared to the rural stretches of Wyoming et al, I couldn't bring myself to face the harsh weather and the corresponding "water logistics" of needing to worry about how much water to carry with respect to the heat and distance between towns. To the station!   I found myself on the Salinas Amtrak platform the next morning but still somewhat doubting my decision I was finally committed to the train when an Amtrak employee showed up on the empty platform with a tag for my bike I had to load it into the baggage car, which cruelly has its doors on the upper deck It was a little thrilling to be on a train after so long! So smooth and fast. This is the observation car The train line goes through the Salinas valley so I could see what I was missing by not riding the detour. I ended up being very glad to be in air conditioning instead of outside in the 90F...

After arriving at my grandparents (see the last post) I took some days off the bike to unwind before heading to San Francisco. Riding past Sausalito after descending from Mill Valley A momentous occasion! It was very unpleasant riding though — super loud traffic, pedestrians, wobbly tourists on rental bikes going the other way and a crosswind caught the large, flat sides of my bags, blowing me around! Turns out I was just another wobbly tourist Cable car I "drove" a self-driving car through San Francisco on my birthday. Thrilling to see the wheel turning by itself and I felt surprisingly safe — it drove smoothly and I thought it would probably be better at accurately following traffic laws than humans! Hopefully full self-driving cars will be available to consumers in the next couple decades so I can own one without a driver's license I had a great time exploring singletrack on Mt Sutro in the city. My touring bike is similar in many ways to the earliest mountain ...

The final state line crossing and my arrival to the next place I’m going to call home! I FaceTimed my parents and English grandmother as I rode past the sign First fast food of the trip — riding the drive-through at Jack in the Box. As I was eating I met a curmudgeonly cyclist who was riding randomly around the coast. He recommended I didn’t stay at the campsite I was planning on, which I thankfully ignored because it was one of my favorites Seeing the first signed distance to SF Del Norte Redwoods state park. This is what the guy said I should avoid! Turns out California has even better hiker/biker campsites than Oregon — $5 a spot in the most beautiful campgrounds of the journey  It’s amazing to see the redwoods again — each tree is awe-inspiring and combined the forests are so serene. I think these parks are up with Zion National Park as my favorite places in the world Jeremy and I arrived at the hiker/biker campsite at the same time. The bear boxes there had some free provisio...