Day 1: San Francisco to Crescent City
2024-08-23 — Part of PAX 2024 — ← prev next →
Start of day: Home, Redwood City, CA
End of day: Crescent City, CA
Distance: 385
Home
08:13
Here we go. This is the first day of a two week trip. Four days of riding up the coast, a week in Seattle, and then five or six days of riding back down. 
I’ve decided to ride up highway 101 all the way, from San Francisco through the redwoods and the Oregon coast and the Olympic Peninsula, all the way to Seattle. There are faster routes, and there are more scenic routes. But I’m always one for an arbitrary and unimportant challenge. So I’ve decided to ride every mile of of Highway 101.
I am very familiar with 101 between the Bay Area and Los Angeles. It connects the my home in the Bay Area, my parents’ house in San Luis Obispo County, and San Diego where I went to university. I’ve driven on the southern portion of 101 hundreds of times. It’s a boring freeway, better than I-5 but that’s no great feat. In contrast, 101 north of San Francisco, I have driven probably less than 10 times. On motorcycle trips I always prefer the Marin and Sonoma coast on Highway 1.
Today the goal is just to put down miles. My destination is Crescent City. I’m sticking to 101 the whole way; though I will allow myself the brief diversion of Avenue of the Giants.
Golden Gate Bridge Vista Point
10:05
Cloverdale
11:51
It’s a nice autumnal day: cool, light breeze, and mostly cloudy. To the north I see heavier clouds. I’ll hit rain before Eureka and it looks like it’ll be heavy in Crescent City. I’m prepared for it: I have liners for my gear and the luggage is all waterproof.
The ride was uneventful through Santa Rosa and Healdsburg. I’m stopping for a sandwich in Cloverdale, the last city of any size for a while. Cloverdale is where I bought my third bike (a 1999 VFR800) twelve years ago.
Crescent City
18:00
I had little memory of 101 beyond Healdsburg. Usually, I’ve turned off toward the coast before getting this far north. After Hopland, 101 becomes much nicer: down to two lanes, then one, meandering through the oak-lined valleys.
Avenue of the Giants is still great, worth the diversion, even as the clouds thickened above me and the day darkened. I stopped for tea at one of the tiny towns along the way, and put on my rain layers.
I picked up the rain at Fernbridge. With all my layers already on, I just carried on and turned cruise control down a little. I stopped at Eureka for fuel. After McKinleyville, traffic thinned. Often it felt like I had the road to myself.
The rain got stronger at Klamath and the last 20 miles were quite unpleasant. I stayed dry, just a little chilly. As I checked into my room, a series of emergency vehicles went by: an ambulance, then a police car, then a minute later another police truck and a fire truck, then more, a half dozen in all. There must have been a very bad accident on 101. Whatever it was, it was behind me, and I’m glad not to be involved at all.
The rain is supposed to stop overnight.
