73.6 mi / 6:18:50 time / 11.6 mph avg. / 4947 ft. climbing
Staying at Cottonwood Creek National Forest Campground

Last night as I explored the closed, empty campground, I came across this 50 yards from my site:

Uh oh. What made that? A horse? The world’s biggest dog? Or a bear? Suddenly the free campsite seemed like much less of a good deal. Checking the Internet for bear scat photos proved inconclusive, but I did reconfirm for myself that if it was a black bear, he was extremely unlikely to eat me, he would only want to eat my food. There were no bear boxes, so instead I packed up all my food and cooking gear and placed it on the roof of the vault toilets, as high as I could get it. I put my garbage bag on the roof of another toilet even further from my site. Okay, problem solved.

Until, as I lay down writing my journal entry, concerned about the tablet screen turning my tent into a glowing beacon, some cars would turn off the main highway, point their lights right at me, and slowly drive up the access road. Most seemed to drive on, but some turned around and went back out, and I even began to become concerned about the flash of headlights from the main highway as the cars drove by.

And then one drove in, stopped, and turned off the engine. Oh shit. Was I busted? No, at least not immediately. All I could see through the mesh of the tent was some light glinting through the trees, sometimes falling right on my white tent body. Should I have put the rain fly on to make it less visible? Too late now! Who were they? Why were they just sitting there near or in this closed campground? I thought I heard some voices, but very little and very briefly. Needless to say, no more journal entry would get written that night, as I nervously stayed dark and silent watching not just their light but the lights of any other cars on the road. Originally I figured that I wouldn’t be able to sleep because I’d be worried about a bear, but now I had a new reason for sleep to stay miles away, and I was cursing myself for stashing my stuff out there where these late-night mystery men would likely steal it for themselves. I was trapped.

I tried to tell myself all these thoughts were irrational, that no one comes to closed campgrounds to evict (or murder) bike tourists, no one steals camping gear and food, and even if that was their goal, they would never point their lights at the roof of the toilets, so would have no idea anything was even there. But of course in the black night, none of that rationality took hold. I even started to remember that I’d read the largest black bears can reach up 9 feet. How high can I reach? I’m 6’4″,add two feet for my arm length and standing on my toes… hopefully that bear isn’t one of the largest ones. But his scat was pretty large….

And on and on until I finally calmed down and fell asleep sometime before midnight. After that I actually slept pretty well, with the blaring train whistle being the thing that woke me a few times.

I woke normally at 6am, and in the gray light, timed the loud-zipper exit from my tent with the noise of a logging truck going by on the highway. I couldn’t even see anything from where the light had been coming from, there were so many trees, so even if they had known exactly where to look, there’s no way anyone would have seen me. And of course my bags were still right there, touched not even by chipmunks. As it got lighter and I packed up my gear, I could see what looked like some people camped over by the other toilet where I had stashed my garbage. I had some receipts and stuff in the bag with my name, so, I tried to look like I knew what I was doing and walked over to grab it. One of the guys was up, and after I grabbed it and started walking away, called out to me:

“Do you run this place?”

“No, do you?”

He gave me some story (which was probably true) about driving into town and asking the sheriff if it was okay to camp there. Looked like a totally normal couple of guys out on a camping/fishing trip. So just as it would have been with me and the bear, as scared as I was, he was actually more afraid of me. Which makes total sense in the light of day. But in the dark of night, it’s amazing how fear of the unknown can take over and make imaginations run wild. I don’t know if that’s an effect of modern human culture, conditioned by the fact that we rarely have to face the dark unknown? Or is it an ancient survival instinct, ingrained in us from our earliest days when the darkness was unstoppable and the unknown was everywhere?

Ok, then the day. It was 41 degrees, but a California 41 rather than an Oregon 41, so somehow I was still ok in shorts. A quick ride brought me to the cute well-kept Old West-style crossroads of Greenville, where I got a monster breakfast burrito at super-friendly Anna’s Cafe.

The 23 miles from Greenville to Quincy were… interesting. Since I entered Lassen I’ve been on Adventure Cycling’s Sierra-Cascades route. When I was dealing with all the logging trucks a few days ago on CA 299, I figured that’s just part of taking my own route, while Adventure Cycling generally goes out of their way (often too far, IMO) to avoid treacherous traffic. But no, this section of CA 89 was at least as bad as 299. There wasn’t a bit of shoulder the entire stretch, the road was very curvy and hilly with limited visibility ahead, and there were logging trucks aplenty. I probably got passed by only a dozen, but worse was that at least 50 empties went by going the other way, which meant they’d eventually be coming back upon me, this time fully loaded.

Despite that, it was pretty awesome. The road was doing its best to follow the tumultuous Feather River through the deeply carved valleys, but often failed miserably. The railroad the brought the trains last night made a similar attempt, but often on a quite-different path, utilizing trestles and tunnels to flatten the grades.

In Quincy I sat in front of the County Courthouse finishing up the previous night’s journal entry, then went over a couple blocks to the library to upload it using their WiFi.

Leaving Quincy, I was pleased to see fully loaded logging trucks heading towards me, which meant there must have been a million in Quincy they were all driving too, and I would only have the empties to deal with. And there weren’t even many of those for the rest of the day, and it didn’t matter, because I almost always had a shoulder.

I got a late lunch in the well-to-do resort town of Graeagle (haven’t seen one of those since Oregon). Then I spent 20 minutes outside attempting to de-stick my right shifter. It’s been getting notchy and unresponsive for a while now, to the point where I was intentionally avoiding shifting gears, which is stupid because it makes me less efficient. My flush-and-lube seemed to do the trick, and of course I was then kicking myself for not spending 20 minutes three days ago to do it.

Near the end of the day I dropped into a broad, flat valley filled with ranches and straight roads, a nice change from all the forest riding I’ve been doing. Except that the winds, which had been strong and gusty all day, were the strongest there.

I made one last stop for groceries in Sierraville, leaving me with a 600 foot climb to the campground. What’s 600 feet at the end of a day? Nothing! I had an ice cream sandwich in my belly, a beer in my bag, a good chat with a nice couple in my brain, a ribbon of brand new black asphalt ahead of me, long shadows from the late-afternoon sun behind me, and a beautiful open forest both above and below me. I was completely enveloped in Goodness. I was almost sad that it was only 600 feet.

Tonight’s sleep should go a lot better. Though there are only about 3 other sites taken on this Friday night in this pristine campground, one of them a few sites away is a nice couple who have rode the Oregon coast route (and yesterday I talked with a guy who had done it several times). You better believe I still made the quarter mile walk to put my trash in the dumpster though!

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 15th, 2012 at 11:19 am and is filed under 2012 Bike Tour, bike. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.