It had rained quite heavy overnight, but thankfully we awoke to cloudy and clearing skies. As we packed our wet tents and had breakfast, we noted the cyclist that came in last night was already gone. Katherine noticed his bike light as he left around 6AM in the morning! His late arrival the night before, and his stealth camping, and very early departure made it seem as if he was trying to avoid paying the $5 hiker/biker camping rate..
We cycled to Trinidad and checked out the memorial lighthouse. At one point we noted very very dark clouds behind us, with what looked like very heavy rain. Straight ahead of us were clear blue skies. A little bit of rain did catch up to us, but we were able to ride out of the clouds into the blue sky thanks to the slow moving clouds.
We continued on highway 101 further until we took a side road exit as recommended per our guidebook. We noticed a group of cyclists at a local market and after riding past them (we were a little too focused and had a bit too much momentum), we turned around to chat to them. They were a fantastic group and we gave them our blog address. They were riding to Trinidad for the day.
We continued along the road until it became a one lane country rode. There we met another cyclist who appeared to be catching up to the group we had just met. He gave us his recommended route to get into and through Eureka and advised against what was stated in the guidebook. We were happy to take a fellow and local cyclist’s advice for local roads!
We continued along the beautiful country road, and Rob said that it reminded him of roads in rural UK. Instead of returning to highway 101 to get to Eureka, we took the route recommended by the cyclist. It turned out to be a great route, and we crossed 3 consecutive bridges with light courteous traffic and good shoulder to get into Eureka.
One of the first sights we noticed as we entered Eureka was the beautiful buildings of Victorian architecture. Due to the wealth from logging and influence from Europe, there were many beautiful buildings built in the early days of Eureka that were still well kept. We went to a local cafe to get ourselves organized and look for a place to stay in town for the day. We saw dark clouds rolling in and were worried that it might start raining any minute. At the cafe we met another touring cyclist, Oli, from Toronto, Canada. He was cycling from Calgary towards San Francisco, but he had an open-ended destination. It turned out he was the cyclist that had stayed the night before us at the hiker biker site at Patrick Point State Park (he even had the same guidebook as us). We had a nice chat in the cafe with Oli until he had to head out towards the Redwoods. We decided that it was too far for us for the day and we decided we needed to run some errands in Eureka (ie laundry and food!) and do a bit of sightseeing. We exchanged contact info so that we could stay in touch down the road.
We priclined a motel and since we could not check in before 2PM we went to the laundromat. Rob and I grabbed Subway sandwiches for lunch while Katherine forged a light lunch from what we had in our food bag for the time being. The laundromat was packed on a Sunday afternoon, and was filled with very interesting characters from around neighbourhood, including many children running around everywhere in the laundromat. It was a very happening place to hang out!
Later on we checked into our hotel and dried out our very wet tents. Katherine and I went to the Target store a few blocks away to grab food and for me to get a replacement camera (my old camera was just no longer reliable 😦 ).
After some bike maintenance (cleaning and re-lubing of our bike chains), we called it a night!
Trip Around The World 
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