Cycle
Day 15
Camping with Flurin means starting the day jamming out to “On The Road Again” by Willie Nelson. I stayed around to check out the tide pools in the morning, and so did a school field trip. It was a nice reminder that I’m glad I’m not teaching kids or trying to herd them around.
Afterward, I set off for the town of Bandon. I took a series of backroads for about 20 miles until I joined back onto Highway 101. Despite the steeper grades the backroads tend to have, I enjoy them much more than Highway 101. Less traffic, more wildlife, and more fun hidden gems like the South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve. I had no idea what an estuary was, but I learned it’s a partially enclosed coastal body of water like a river, where river water and saltwater mix upstream.
I eventually connected made it into Bandon and rolled up to Wilson’s Market to have lunch with Flurin. This might be the place to grab food, there was quite a line for their burritos. I snagged “the criminal” which is a carne asada burrito with curly fries inside of it. They could tell it was my first time so they told me to peel the foil like a banana, so the burrito doesn’t fall apart everywhere. Mad delicious!
Bandon was a really cool town, there seemed to be a lot of residential development going on. The coastline was full of beaches and overlooks to check out. Face Rock was my favorite, and a local was talking about how an artist usually creates a labyrinth on the beach for people to walk through.
From Bandon, I still had 35 miles to Humbug Mountain State Park. There wasn’t a whole lot to see in between, so I crushed the first 25 miles pretty quickly until I ran into a couple from Germany that is on their own bike tour. They mentioned they’d be camping at Humbug Mountain as well so I decided to grab some brats and other food for a group dinner tonight.
After a 60-mile day, I rolled into the campground which was super nice. I set up camp in a nice, secluded spot then biked up to buy some firewood before the others showed up.
After we all got cleaned up and our tents set up, we got the fire going to cook dinner. It was funny being the only native English speaker because Flurin and the Germans would slip into conversation that was solely German. It was a situation I’d never really been in, but it made me wish I had tried to learn another language. They all knew 4 languages which feels unheard of here in the US but is fairly normal over in Europe.
The German couple was very interesting, they are in their late 20s and have decided to take around 9 months off work to travel. They plan to end their bike tour in San Diego, then road trip east across the US before traveling to Peru and exploring South America. I want to tag along with them, Peru has been on my list of places to explore for a while, so I’m super stoked to hear how their adventure goes.
Stats from today:
- 60 miles biked
- 1,900 vertical feet climbed
- 2 new friends
- 3 brats consumed
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