Day 2 - Roseburg to Willow Creek

We had a good night's rest, and had showers and coffee without too much haste.  We knew we'd have much more pleasant riding ahead of us in not too much time.  Under the light of sunshine, we got a better look at the motel itself.

Tastefully decorated, you say?

Tasteful if you enjoy a floral theme...

...and Franklin Mint cat plates (with a bare lightbulb for atmosphere).

It was quite an eyeful, and not normally the type of motel I'd voluntarily visit, but, the staff was friendly, the room was clean, and the price was right.  And it certainly had more personality than any Motel 6 or Super 8.

We got all our stuff together and got back on the road, and had about another hour of travel on I-5 before we could split off to more interesting roads.  

We stopped in Grants Pass for gas and a stretch, and couldn't ignore that everything was shrouded in haze.  There were wildfires nearby, fortunately in the opposite direction of where we were headed, but the smoke was inescapable nonetheless.

Before our trip, I'd petitioned the collective wisdom of the folks at ADVRider on what roads they might suggest for good motorcycling in Northern California.  We got some good recommendations, the first of which was Waldo Rd. which wasn't far outside of Grants Pass.  We rode for a while, certain we'd missed it somehow, but after pulling over to check where we were on my smartphone, we realized that our sense of scale was off, and we were just a few miles short of Waldo Rd.  Once we turned off on there, things got a lot more interesting.  Sadly it was so interesting I didn't get any pictures.

The pavement was in good condition, there were hardly any cars to share the road with, awesome scenery throughout, and there were twisties aplenty.  Unfortunately, a lot of the turns had rocks right in the middle of the apexes, ranging anywhere from gravel to softball size to football size, and in the case of one turn, beachball sized.  This meant we had to take the turns at a slower pace, or had to do some quick recalculating as we realized our intended line was compromised.

I still haven't gotten fully comfortable taking the Tiger at a fast pace, not as fast as I would take the SV at least.  Being tall, top heavy, with soft suspension and skinny, semi-knobby tires--not to mention costing several times more--I just haven't developed the same confidence I have in the little SV.  Through one turn, I came in a little hot, and saw dreaded rocks in the middle of it.  I tried to readjust my line as best I could, which ended up taking me off the asphalt and into the dirt and rocks at the inside of the turn.  I stood the bike up and stood myself up on the pegs as I did some inpromptu off roading to get myself back on the asphalt.  All ended well, but my heart rate definitely was elevated, and I think I'm still picking bits of my underwear out of my crack.  

The road led to Happy Camp, which would be more aptly named Melancholy Settlement.  We were getting hungry by this point, but nothing in Happy Camp really struck our fancy.  We decided to press on.  

We followed Hwy 96 south, which wasn't as twisty as Waldo Rd. had been, but it was plenty curvy and had lots of scenery to boot.  No fear-inducing rocks scattered along the way either, so it was pleasant riding all around.

You can see some of the haze from the fires here.

 We saw that the roads were getting wet and that we'd just missed what looked like a pretty good little spot of rain.  The temperature had also dropped significantly.  We pulled over at a rest area to secure our electronics, zip up vents on our jackets, and take a break.  It also happened to be the site of a nice little waterfall.

The Trinity River

A moment after we'd parked and pulled off our helmets, we noticed that the parking lot was moving.  Upon closer inspection, we saw that the rain had excited a bunch of baby toads.  There were literally hundreds, if not thousands of them hopping around the parking area.  It looked like the gravel was animated.  We did our best to not step on, or roll over any, but I can't be 100% certain we managed to avoid them all.

Just a couple of the little guys, these two were safe at least.

We got back to the road, and before long ended up in Willow Creek.  It was around 3:00 PM by this point, and we'd each only had an apple so far that day.  We got some gas and tried to decide where to eat.  There was a restaurant that looked OK from the outside, but only had one car in the lot, a crowded burger joint, and a Mexican restaurant, "Gonzalez."  We decided to try Gonzalez.  We chose...poorly.

I ordered a burrito and a beer (reliable, if a bit unimaginative) and Chuck got the chili verde plate and an iced tea.  My burrito was large, but otherwise unremarkable.  Chuck's chili verde, on the other hand, looked like green Dinty Moore with a side of rice and beans.  Real chili verde is slow cooked pork in a tomatillo sauce, but this looked like they'd just taken chunks of meat and poured green salsa over it, making it a weird, gloppy soup.  To make matters worse, our waiter was apparently the local dude-bro and began and ended every phrase with the word "man" or "bro," as in "Hey man, you need something? Some more water? Sure, bro."  And on top of it all, the food was overpriced--my burrito was not worth $10 and Chuck's mystery glop was definitely not worth $15.  

We paid our bill and went to the small grocery store next door for any supplies for camping that evening.  We were full, and it was late enough that we didn't feel that we'd need much of anything for dinner, so we just got a bottle of Bulleit for $22.  Gotta love California's inexpensive and easily accessible liquor. 

Among the roads that were recommended to us, one of the most highly lauded was the enigmatic "FS1."  Though a forest service road, it is apparently paved from beginning to end and links Hwy 299 to Hwy 36.  In the original route recommendations, we were told where to find it coming from the south, but we weren't really clear on where to find it if coming from the north (FS1 was not listed on our paper map, and forest service roads tend to go by different names on Google Maps).  I asked on ADVRider, and was told the entrance was just past a Cal-Trans building.  I thought I'd been able to spot said building when looking at the satellite view in Google Maps.  We figured we'd find the road and then camp somewhere along the way.

It turned out that the building I'd spotted on Google Maps was in fact, not a Cal-Trans building, but a house, but we turned up the road anyway.  After several miles, the road turned to dirt.  It was getting darker out, both due to the hour, and clouds rolling in, complete with ominous thunder.  We stopped at the end of the pavement and discussed what we should do.  This was obviously the wrong road, but we figured that it would at least head in the right direction, maybe even link up with FS1.  Or, we could head back out to 299 and see if we could find the right road.  Chuck voted to press on and follow the dirt road and I acceded.  This would turn out to be our second poor decision of the day.

The dirt road wasn't bad, just slow going, especially with Chuck being on a street bike.  He was in the lead since his was the less equipped machine and I had to keep stopping to give him a lead so that I wouldn't be choking on his dust.  After not too long, the thunder grew louder, and drops began to fall.  It got to be a full on thunderstorm, and we got wet.  We were in trees though, so most of the water was dispersed by the time it reached us, and at least the rain kept the dust down.  

Eventually, the dirt turned back into pavement and we felt we'd accomplished something.  Sure, we may have taken the wrong road and sure, it might have been slow going and we got a little wet, but we'd done it, we'd persevered and made it to the other side!  Feeling not too bad about ourselves, we were toodling along when we saw a cat skulking across the road.  A big cat.  A really big cat.  It didn't take long to realize that we'd caught a mountain lion by surprise.  It took a quick look at us, turned around, and disappeared back into the woods as we rode past.  I've been on a fair number of outdoor excursions, but to date that was my first and only glimpse of a mountain lion in the wild.  I would be fine with not coming any closer to another one.

Soon enough, our road intersected with the main highway.  Excitedly we turned onto it and then our hearts sank when we saw we were on Hwy 299.  Again.  We'd just spent an hour or two riding around in the woods to effectively cover about 5 miles of highway distance. 

Fortunately, there was a campground about a quarter mile up the road and we pulled in to get our bearings and discuss our options.  We considered going back out to find the real FS1, but soon decided that it was late and the campground would do nicely for our purposes. It didn't hurt that the fee was only $6 per night.

We set up camp, and with thunder looming in the distance, elected to put up the rain flies and stash our stuff as best as possible.  We foraged some fire wood and had peaceful night with our bourbon, and hoped for better progress tomorrow.

All the sites had these stoves installed. Never seen these before, and they don't look like
they've been used in ages, but still a neat concept.

Idyllic, no?