After a fun day of appreciating our ride leaders yesterday, we entered our final state of our cross-country journey today. We haven’t quite made it to the coast yet, so this doesn’t feel exactly like a finishing line, but we can certainly start counting the time we have left until we reach San Francisco. With Mount Shasta in the distance for the entire day, every mile was made fun and interesting by the new details we could pick out on the mountain and how large it appeared on our horizon. Eventually, we made it right up next to the mountain and stayed in a church named after it.
Ride Overview
Mileage: 83.4 miles
Elevation: +2,903 ft. / -3,661 ft.
Points of Interest: California State Border, Living Memorial Sculpture, Mt. Shasta
Tales of the Trail
In the morning, we came outside of the United Evangelical Free Church on top of the town to look out on a beautiful sunrise with Mt. Shasta just visible in the distance and the moon still bright in the sky. We had an awesome fun activity from Parker in the morning playing Simon Says and Ehsan, who had never played the game before, took home the victory! Out of Klamath Falls, we started on a bike path which was a nice change from the highway miles we have been going on even though we had the majority of the day on those once again. When we did make it to the highway, we joined via the on ramp just as any car would and merged into our shoulder to take on a reasonably tough incline for being so early in the morning. After that, the road became relatively flat and actually pretty quiet; enough for us to have some conversation and not just ride single-file the whole way.
The first team reached the California sign and took pictures. Then, the second and third teams rolled up in close succession since a flat tire had slowed down the second group to roll out on the day. That made for a fun time at the Oregon sign which we had all missed having shuttled from Boise, Idaho across the border to Ontario, Oregon, and then the California sign following that. This felt like a real milestone. Every state has a feeling of accomplishment associated with entering or leaving it, but knowing that we had now rode from New York to California was just as much of a novelty to say as it was to actually accomplish. After too much time spent taking pictures to get just the right shots, these teams decided not to make those who were up the road wait too long and continued on to the first rest stop.
The flat and moderately trafficked highway continued on until just about the second rest stop where we encountered a construction zone and a sizable hill. Throughout the summer, construction zones have actually been pretty simple and sometimes nice for us on bikes. When we rode up today, we spoke with the worker holding traffic for the single lane through and he let us ride up the closed lane until we hit the active construction. This was like having a whole road to ourselves! The construction was relatively small and then another road to ourselves again. Other times during the summer, this had been the case too where construction was actually much more calming and easygoing than just the open road would have been. On the other side, where the van had parked and the rest stop was located, we also had time to ourselves with only waves of traffic since they were being held to one grouping at a time. It also makes calling for cars behind very simple because you know there will be one set and then a big pause before the next.
When we crested this climb, Mt. Shasta was appearing much closer than it had before. By the time we reached the third rest stop, which included around 7 miles of descending, we were right up beside it. At 14,179 ft. Mt. Shasta certainly appeared massive and we had a great time looking at it from a distance and with the knowledge that the town we were staying in, also named Mt. Shasta, was not up the side of it. Our third rest stop was at a sculpture park called the Living Memorial Sculpture which honored veterans of our nation and was a tranquil place for such a monument.
The final miles into town saw us get onto Interstate 5, a scary proposition but in reality it had the largest shoulder of any road we had been on and felt safer than the roads we had been on the rest of the day. After we took our exit, there were some forested roads and then a turn into our almost idyllic church stayover for the evening (St. Barnabas Episcopal Church). We had trees on all sides and just a short walk over to the neighboring wellness center where we took showers in the evening. Dinner had also been donated which was lasagna and ice cream for dessert! This felt like such a peaceful place to stay and we could sleep well knowing that there were also under 70 miles until another rest day.
