We were delayed from leaving early this morning as the Westport Hotel doesn’t serve their first round of breakfast(coffee, fresh baked scones, jellies, butter, and a fruit dish- all delivered to your room) until 8:00 AM. Second breakfast is served downstairs at 9:00, a delicious sausage fritatta, fried potatoes and french bread toast with another selection of fresh jams. Since our trip today is only about 20 miles, it’s not a problem. We just hope traffic won’t be too bad.
We left Westport around 10:00 AM, a far cry from our departure time yesterday. Route 1 was not too busy and all the vehicles were cautious in passing us.
The local folks say that the local drivers, truck drivers incuded, know that cyclists will be on the road and prepare for passing them. The ones we have to worry about are the old folks from out of state driving around in their big — RV’s . Lots of roller hills today, quick up and downs and not real steep made the ride fun.
After 12 miles on Route 1, we turned off to pick up a multi-use trail
that was called the Haul Road for the former lumber/logging company that operated out of Fort Bragg (now closed as of 2002 ) started as a family lumber company -sold to Union Lumber Co., then Boise Cascade, then Georgia Pacific – the 437 acre closed mill site in Fort Bragg is still owned by the Koch brothers and is still in remediation for toxic wastes, etc. However, the city of Fort Bragg was able to create parklands and the multi-use trail along the coast (about 100 acres)(where the Glass Beach is located). Bill took some zoomed in photos from the top of the cliff to the beach below.
In the early 20th century, the beach was used as a dump site and years of wave action have created the tiny bits of sea glass – folks are asked to leave the glass but there were “pickers” when we cycled by today.
We stopped at Eggheads for lunch – great sandwiches, then on to two used bookstores, and now we are settled at the Best Western mapping out our route for the next few days. Hope to be in Bodega Bay by Monday.