Ryan's Mom and Lloyd at base camp

SHINGLETOWN to WHISKEYTOWN (Amy) -- Lloyd made us delicious pancakes for breakfast and made a lot of jokes about this being our last real meal. Which was an exaggeration of course, Ryan and I eat a lot of good food on the road. But even so there was a foreboding quality to our leaving the comfort of Ryan’s parents.

So right by Lloyd and Mary’s house, there is a CRAZY road that leads up to Shingletown. It can’t be more then 2 miles long, but it climbs up 2000 feet. Although Lloyd had a good time talking about how much it would suck to ride up the road on a bike, he generously drove us in his truck. No comments please.

We are wussies!

As we ascended, Lloyd helpfully pointed out each elevation marker. Right after 3000 feet there were patches of snow. We didn’t like this at all, because I think that even though we had been keeping track of the weather, we had hoped that when we got to Shingletown all the snow would have melted and we could continue on the route we had originally planned. We had been excited to see the Lava Beds and Klamath Falls and Crater Lake. At this point please refer to our photo of Shingletown.

Lloyd told us that even if the roads were all plowed that they wouldn’t bother plowing the shoulders of the road, where we ride.

Shingletown: The real beginning!

So obviously we headed west toward the Central Valley instead of east toward more snow and more elevation gain. The new tentative plan was to go west then north on river roads in the mountains. Then we would either somehow ride to my brother’s in Ashland, Oregon, or we could get to Yreka and he would pick us up.

It was a great 20-mile descent into Redding from Shingletown. This day was actually fairly clear and warm too.

Amy's food, back off!

I had to take a pee break midway down. Lloyd is constantly talking about poison oak, I don’t know how I forgot to check for it, but after I had already done the deed and had touched all kinds of weeds I became concerned about some possibly very uncomfortable days ahead. For the next several hours I discussed all aspects of poison oak with Ryan—what it actually looks like, how to tell if you’ve got it, what to do once you do, etc. We still don’t know very much.

I demanded to take a break and have some snacks before we got to Redding. Ryan complained a lot about this. It was here that he began his mantra for the day: “But we haven’t even GONE anywhere yet!” He was clearly expecting the touring rhythm we had a year ago to just kick in and we’d go many miles effortlessly. But really we have never gone anywhere without having a ton of snack breaks. Despite his protests, Ryan plopped down and we both had some baked goods.

We then headed into Redding and got totally lost. Initially, we were riding on a big freeway. I enjoyed this. When we exited, Ryan, trip navigator, became flustered because he did not have the right maps for our new route. We had to guess and we guessed wrong. We rode for quite a while before we were able to find the downtown area. Then Ryan was having some kind of physical problem. I can’t remember if it was that he had to pee really bad or that he was starving. We knew it was time to stop though.

Digital cameras are fun.

Ryan spotted a nice bakery and café where we ate some really good sandwiches and assorted pastries. We were impressed with the service, their fine brownies, even their bread, a mixed white and wheat flour French country loaf with a lovely crust. This bakery made me think that Redding was a good town.

On the way out of Redding I wanted to stop at a supermarket to get last minute food and poison oak cream. Ryan was unhappy about this stop, repeatedly saying, “We haven’t even GONE anywhere yet.” But I felt it was important to stock up, since we didn’t know how far into unshoppable space we were going.

We then proceeded mostly uphill to the Whiskeytown Recreation Area. The climb was very gradual and we just cruised along. In my mind we were slowly building up to full touring strength, and it was fine to do only 50 miles on the first real day of riding, especially since we had a long trip ahead of us.

Because of all our stopping and getting lost, it was about 5pm when we got to the intended campground, Oak Bottom. I thought it was a perfectly fine spot. It was a big campground that seemed to be mainly for recreational boaters, but they weren’t there that weekend. It was mountainous, but not ruggedly so. Dark afternoon clouds were coming in.

Uh-oh...Bear Country!

I was not exhausted, but I was happy to be at our destination. Ryan got very agitated and really wanted to go on to a further campground. He didn’t seem to be sure on the details of that campground though, and Ryan is adamantly against illegal camping. It didn't make sense to go on and I was happy where we were. I lay down in the parking lot to emphasize my satisfaction with the mileage we had already achieved.

Ryan was a little cranky as we set up the tent and got settled. I made some excellent dehydrated split pea soup though and he liked that.

Then it started sprinkling and we went in the tent and I suggested that we write letters to our sweeties. Ryan was completely opposed to this, but when I began and he had absolutely nothing else to do he too wrote a letter. When he was done he was very pleased.

Soon it was dark and so we tucked in and Ryan began his usual talk about how he finds it so difficult to sleep when he is camping, and how he actually hates camping altogether.

As if to add extra fuel to his anti-camping, fussy-sleeping fire, Ryan then realized that his Thermarest had popped.