May 12, 2023 – Long Beach to MacKerricher State Park
Today we drove to Fort Bragg using a rental car with a trunk-mounted bicycle carrier that I found on OfferUp for $30. I was dead tired in the morning because I only slept about 2 hours (stayed up to setup this blog… so you’re welcome), so Isaac had to take over driving for a couple of hours. We left Long Beach a little after 5am and all-in-all it took us about 9 and a half hours to get to the Enterprise to drop off the car. Actually, to be exact we drove it a nearby Starbucks, unloaded our bikes/equipment, dumped the bike rack next to a dumpster, and then dropped off the car. Afterwards, we rode 4.8 miles to MacKerricher State Park and set up camp in a fairly cramped hiker/biker site. The coast up here is beautiful, but we drove past what’s going to be the first 15-20 miles of our trip tomorrow and it was a stark reminder of how rough the road is. There is hardly any shoulder for a large part of the ride and the winding roads make it so that cars don’t always see you as they round the corners. Regardless, I’m looking forward to getting through the 42 miles and officially seeing some new parts of the pacific coast.
I packed some food in order to see if I can fuel myself better this time, but turns out that just makes my pack heavier and bulkier. So I guess it worked, because I’ll be eating nothing but things in my pack until I lighten it up and free up some space.
Reception is pretty bad here so I won’t be able to upload this tonight, but I look forward to updating everyone tomorrow.
-Chris