Hidden gems of Northern California
Slow travel, the name of the game when you cycle through the landscape and indulge all of your senses by the smell, sound and culture surrounding you! The eucalyptus tree is an all time favourite to cycle by and brings back lots of good memories of being on the road in northern California!
Green giants
Leaving Oregon behind, we enter California to see the famous Redwoods! On our way we stopped at a bakery and got randomly invited to Christie’s house in Ferndale, some 100 miles further down the road. An amazing ride continued along the large redwoods and let us to Prairie Creek campground. Here we were awaited by our cycling friends Pascale & Johnny (aka the Saddlegroovers) who we first met in Astoria! Nights were getting cold and we sought the warmth of our sleeping bags early to rise and shine for a morning walk between the green giants!
‘Cathedral’ tree 
Gazing up 
Welcome to California!
It’s hard to describe how we felt walking among the largest trees on earth. They are teaching you some history (some are up to 2,500 years old) and make you feel tiny and insignificant at the same time. The lush green forest in all its beauty mesmerized us and made us want to share this love for nature. Everyone should have this breathtaking experience in order to appreciate nature and its unlimited capabilities of creation! Luckily we can add a little to this as our CO2 emissions are intended to be compensated by planting trees at the projects of Land Life Company further south.
Zero waste household
We continued our way back to the coast and stayed the night at Carol’s zero waste household in Trinidad. Using plastics is a choice, and if you choose wisely you can avoid accumulating loads of plastic waste we learn from Carol. She holds up two small pieces of plastic being the only ones she collected over the last month. A sun boiler for warm water, some solar panels on the roof and an extensive vegetable garden further add to her green pledge. Impressive to experience and great to learn from! We really are impressed and inspired by the people we meet on our adventure!
Zero waste 
Great rides
Village gems
The impressive northern Californian coast reveals some of the nicest towns on our trip so far. We are surprised by Ferndale, which looks like a real life movie set with colorful Victorian houses! We were so lucky to be invited by Kristie to be part of their sporty family for a day. Amazing how they fit in so many hours of sports. We woke up in their VW van in the yard and they just returned from the gym at 7am in the morning! When we were drinking coffee at the Mind’s eye workshop we met Marc. Marc is the owner of the coffee cum workshop and a dedicated and skillful skin boat maker. He organizes workshops to build your own sea kayak and re-introduces these skills in Alaska on the Aleutian island, how inspiring! These boats really look like pieces of art, great to see his efforts to keep the tradition alive!
Old school! 
Mind’s Eye 
Victorian Ferndale
With a smile on our face we leave Ferndale to have lunch amongst the cows in the valley and to enjoy the unspoiled coast. No big cities to be found here! We are again in awe of the Redwoods when we cycle the 31 mile Avenue of the Giants. We will never get bored of watching these largest living things on earth. On the way we stop by a voting office to find out how voting works in practice. Conclusion, there is a lot more to vote for in USA than the Netherlands! Next to political candidates they also choose their sherriff and vote yes or no on a lot of local and state proposals. The next few nights we spend on the hike-biker sections of the beautiful state parks together with our ‘cycling crew’ Johnny & Pascale from Canada, Flo from France and Will from the USA! Great fun to cook together and share experiences and stories from the road! Together we battle the infamous steep Leggett hill (330m elevation) to get back to the coast. On the way we also meet Anni, the German girl that we heard about up in the Yukon, Canada. What a coincidence that we still get to meet in person! That night we all stay at Fort Bragg’s KOA campsite. We enjoy the jacuzzi and cook dinner in the communal kitchen, what a treat! Only to find out that our tent got terrorized by raccoons and a skunk! Luckily we got away with a few scratches on our bag and some lost food.
Feeling at home 
Empowerment
The next few days we ride along the stunning coastal highway 1 and make a drone shot of the cycling crew! We discover some more picturesque gems of villages like Mendocino, where we have a nice lunch and enjoy the scenery. All the national parks along the way provide plenty of camping options. A great way to enjoy the outdoors and hear the waves breaking at the rocks at night!
Whiking the coast 
Rocky cliffs 
Follow the sun
This part of California is the perfect getaway, especially as there is mostly no cell signal along highway 1. This scenic route is actually quite demanding for cyclists as every cliff corner requires a significant down and uphill. In fact, northern California had us climb 7,953 meters. That is almost one time up mount Everest! On our way down to San Francisco we pass Bodega Bay, the town in which Hitchcock’s famous movie the Birds was shot. We enjoy fish tacos at the Birds cafe and complete our 100km ride at the campsite in Olema. Being on our honeymoon, we had our 4th month anniversary to celebrate and luckily found a little restaurant next to the campsite. From here it was only one more day to reach the famous bridge, something to dream of that night!
Admiring craftsmanship at work
From Olema we cycled to the hills above the bridge and passed through Sausalito to see our friend Marc at work. Together with Brooke he was teaching a skin boat making workshop at Spaulding boatworks and we got to see the result after their five days of hard work! Beautiful pieces of craftsmanship. Not only with the skin boats, but also the other wooden historical boats that are being built there. Spaulding’s mission is to preserve American maritime heritage by teaching traditional and contemporary marine skills! We were really impressed by all of it together and it was a treat to set foot on Freda, the oldest sailing yacht on the West Coast.
Brooke and Marc 
The Freda
Golden Gate to San Francisco
A dream coming true to cycle this majestic bridge! It is one of the most recognizable icons in the world which made it a childhood goal to cross it one day! If we could have ever guessed that we would cross it with our sailing cycles, on our way from Alaska… it would have exceeded our wildest dreams! And it does, it feels like a major achievement making it this far on the bicycle.
Dream come true 
With consul general Gerbert Kunst
Welcomed by Dutch consul general
It was extra special since we were welcomed to San Francisco by Gerbert Kunst, the Dutch consul general, who was awaiting us at the other side of the bridge! We joined him for a coffee and had a very nice conversation about our trip and the work at the consulate in San Francisco. Great to hear about green initiatives being on top of the agenda for the Dutch consulate!
We reached San Francisco in time to welcome Matthijs’ parents for a road trip through California!