I woke up really early, unfortunately, and finished blogging and charging my phone. Ethan joined me eventually and after his phone was charged we decided to pack up and head out so that if we wanted to go the extra 30 miles we would have time.
-Shawn (the guy we've been with since Humbug) ended up getting in late and didn't feel like setting up his tent at the state park (where we were). So when he pulled in and saw the KOA he decided to rent a cabin. Then he came over to the state park and invited us to stay with him. Some guy staying at the hiker/biker site had just told us he saw a bobcat earlier and it was about 40 degrees outside. It obviously didn't take much convincing for us to say yes to him. We packed up our stuff pretty quick and followed him back to the KOA.-
So that's how we ended up there. Anyway, we got a great nights sleep so we figured we would be able to make it the extra 30. We stopped at a grocery store in Manchester and got food for lunch that day. Shawn showed up there a few minutes after us and then caught up to us after we left. We decided to ride together and try to make it to the farther park.
Shawn seriously helped us keep up our pace, even though I don't think he knew it or was even trying to. We got to the next town about lunch time and he invited us to get tacos with him as an extension of our wedding present (I think I explain this in one of the currently back logged blogs...stay tuned for explanation). We gladly accepted. So we got some tacos and an empanada - the real thing is much better than Taco Bell- and hung out for a while.
Right before we left the taco place I had to go to the bathroom. It wasn't part of the restaurant, but it was right next to it, so I don't really know who the bathroom belongs to. Anyway, I put my phone on the back of the toilet, but it fell so I moved it to the window ledge. When I was done I joined the guys and we headed out. About an hour later (10-12 miles) I had to stop and shed some layers of clothes. After I did that I went to grab my phone to see if I had service. CRAP!!!! I left my phone in the bathroom!! Dang it!!
Ethan immediately called the taco place, but it wasn't there. I thought someone had stolen it and all was lost. I hadn't quite started crying when Ethan called my phone and someone answered. They explained that they found it and wanted to return it somehow. Ethan then explained that we were on bikes heading south and they could meet us literally anywhere down the road. Butttt they were going north and were about 40 minutes north of us already. As frustrating as that was to hear I was glad that they wanted to get it back to me. I was still unsure if they were serious about returning it, but then Ethan got several texts from people in my family and people on my recent calls list saying that the person called to say I left my phone. That made me feel better about them returning it.
Anyway, after the phone debacle we had to press on. We still had a lot of ground to cover. We rode for a while before we started to get tired. We needed a snack break. We went through construction area that was a one lane road and down a pretty big hill. We biked as fast as we could because the cars couldn't go around us. The construction ended in the tiny little town and we pulled off the road as soon as we could to let all the traffic through. I'm sure that all those people were not happy with us, but whatever. There was a small store across the street and another biker told us about a little park down the road right on the bluffs of the coast. Shawn got some ice cream snickers bars and we headed to the park. We made turkey cheese wraps and chilled for a while. Ethan investigated the cove and we watched people scuba diving. After we had thoroughly rested we decided we needed to get going. We had a big hill coming up that was going to take some time to get over.
We read the book about the upcoming hill and it didn't look too bad. I had to pee really bad before we got up it so we stopped at a closed state park. We had passed over a couple cattle guards, which are these metal bars down in the road that the cattle won't cross over, so we knew there might be cows wandering around but didn't know they would be right next to the bathroom I was trying to use. There was this cow just standing right next to the bathroom. It was hilarious. I walked up to it slowly and it moved away from me without freaking out. Ethan and Shawn thought it was really funny. After that we had to tackle this hill.
Back to what I was saying about the book ... It lied! The hill was terrible. It was cut into the side of a mountain basically and after we got to the top it went down a little and then back up and then down and back up. Forever. Well not exactly forever, but it seemed like it to me. We finally got to the end I it in a town called Jenner and we were losing sunlight fast. We had about 10 more miles to go so we kicked it in high gear. Even though we were all struggling we made decent time to the campground. We even stopped a couple times to take pictures of the sunset.
It was dark when we finally got to our campsite and we were all starving. We made a bunch of food and set up camp in the dark. It was a long day, but we saw some really great scenery and had a lot of fun. We went to bed feeling very accomplished. :]
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