It's pretty, but will it stop raining?

WILLOW CREEK (Amy) -- We awoke at the Bigfoot Motel to the sound of rain. The previous day was exhausting and I can’t tell you how daunting it was to think about riding all day in the rain again. Putting on all our wet clothes, skin shriveling up from being soaked, rain constantly pelting us, these things do not make for an ideal vacation.

All this might have been tolerable if we didn’t have to go very far and we could stay at another motel on par with the Bigfoot Motel. But the nearest town of any size was Happy Camp, not a promising name if you are not interested in camping, and it was 85 miles away.

Amy didn't want to go on

I did not want to ride in the rain all day, and Ryan was almost phobic about having to camp in the rain. But there is this thing in cycling called a rest day where if you ride your bike day after day you take a day off so your body can recover. For instance, there are usually two rest days during the three week long Tour de France. So I told Ryan, “Maybe we should just take a rest day and see if it stops raining tomorrow.” Ryan has a lot of cycling pride and he protested this plan vehemently, but a few minutes later he agreed to this cop out.

I was pleased and went to pay for another motel night, but Ryan was deeply unhappy and sulked for the whole rest of the day. We had breakfast and then walked in the rain to look at the Trinity River, which by this time was getting pretty full.

boo-hoo

We could have hung out all day at the little public library, but it was closed. So we went to the thrift store and I got two books. We looked for other consumer opportunities, but there were no more in the whole town.

Over the course of Day 4, we asked many people whether they thought there was actually a motel in Happy Camp. A teenager at a coffee shop even called her mother to ask for us. But we never got a solid answer. Alarmingly, people in the tiny town of Willow Creek uniformly regarded Happy Camp as a much smaller town.

Amy looks for other options

We were irritated to be out in the rain, so eventually we went back to the Bigfoot, where we watched the weather reports. They were apocalyptic. Rain for three days, one day of only clouds, then an even more rainy spell followed by more rain.

We had hoped to get to Oregon via this pass that would lead to Cave Junction and then we could cut over to Ashland to visit my brother. But clearly this pass would be snowed in, so our other option was to head north and then go east to the I-5 again and have my brother pick us up at Yreka and take us to Ashland. But that was unappealing because we would still have to get past the foreboding Happy Camp and then be assisted by car drivers yet again. Oh, and all of this would take two or three days and it would still be pouring rain. And once in Oregon the rain would follow us and we would have no reasonable route to get home.

Now it was late afternoon and I chose to ignore our problems and read, but Ryan was going stir crazy so he went out for a walk.

Note to our readership: This is the most embarrassing part of our trip. If you have in the past been personally inspired by reading about our cycling accomplishments you might want to stop reading this site and go back to last year’s. If you are a meany who will enjoy our pain you can go away too.

Ryan cries

Ryan came back from his walk all excited. A ray of light had penetrated his dark and rainy world. He had seen a U-Haul truck.

I am confident that his escape plan was already fully formed in his head, but he was diplomatic and presented our options. I said, “No Ryan, it is just too humiliating.” But what were we going to do, he kept asking. We were a hundred miles from any town and it was still pouring. I said it would be too expensive, but he pointed out that staying in motels was going to cost more, and that, in case I was not understanding, he would not be camping in the rain. I said our friends and family would laugh at us. Ryan said he didn’t care.

My pride was really the sticking point, but that eroded pretty quickly and we went to where the U-Haul was parked. We were giggly and kind of ecstatic, released from any sense of dignity.

Frank’s Garage was a super manly looking place, so we were a little apprehensive and Ryan made me do the inquiring. Turns out that Frank and his wife Christine were extremely nice and understanding and also had some healthy skepticism regarding the U-Haul Corporation. And the truck was only $142. We took it. We were so happy.

Frank and Christine gave us a lot of parental-type advice and we drove back to the motel. We were really giddy and the rain actually stopped for a few minutes. We took pictures of the Bigfoot trap that was a feature of our motel.

Ryan was finally happy, and although the U-Haul was kind of the ultimate humiliation on this already damned trip, it was also the highlight as we were getting the hell out.

Then we got a pizza that we ate in our motel room while enjoying cable television. We watched more weather reports just to reinforce the wisdom of our decision.

The weather channel dampens our spirits

Oh, I just have to call my MAAANN!

We are NOT bored.