Taste the ocean.

We are so close we can almost taste it. 

It's another hot day. Thermometer reads 108 in the shade. 

Woke up before the sun in our tent. Jim had made oatmeal and quinoa with cranberries and granola and some more stining nettle tea. It was a good breakfast. The boys were still up playing computer games. 

We left and were joined by a pack of small stray dogs for a little while. We were glad it wasn't a pack if cats. Jim said one of his neighbors has over 100 cats. He trapped more than fifty of them last year but the remaining cats keep having kittens. As we rode out by the railroad a passing couple remarked on our bags and we told them we were riding to San Francisco and they were very impressed(if only they knew where we came from) and they said "well, welcome to the armpit of California!" We found the image amusing. 

We made decent time in the morning before it was too got and windy. 

Stopped to eat at a gas station bar around 10. Then rode until noon or so when we stopped at a Mexican gas station for lunch and to cool off for a little. We probably drank about a gallon of their strawberry lemonade.  

A bunch of people asked if we were going over Paterson pass and said they hoped we weren't going to do it in this heat. 

We were. 

It was really cool but we kept passing all these signs 

It was probably because it was super narrow and winding and hilly and hot without a shoulder up and down a mountain. .

It was really hot but beautiful. We were riding through a giant wind farm. Which meant huge headwind the entire way. 

It was the first time on our trip that we had run out of water. We drank the 4 bottles we had on our bikes and the 4 extra we were carrying. The heat, the hills (mountain) and the wind all made us really thirsty. 

We also cracked open one of the ice packs for our first aid kit to try and cool us off. It was cool(not cold) for about 30 seconds and then just a bag of warm chemicals. Worth a try and I'm glad we didn't really need the ice pack for anything. 

We rode down the other side and stopped at the first place we saw to fill up. It was a casino bar. 

Never ask random people for directions. They always go on for ten minutes debating the merits of different roads. They also bring in other people and opinions. The whole bar was discussing our route and we were trapped. Happens every single time. We usually just say we have our route planned or "oh yeah that IS the road we were taking, thanks." But they sometimes go on. And on. And on. Anyway. 

We had called another warm showers host earlier in the day and they agreed to host us. So nice on such short notice. We got there around 7 and they showed us inside. 

They had a beautiful home on a golf course. Rick (our host) is a (soon-to-be-retired-and-tour-across-the-country) software serial entrepreneur. 

We showered and had a great meal of spaghetti with meat sauce and garlic bread with shortcake for dessert. It was nice discussing bike touring and their experiences. 

We went to bed after turning down their offer to do laundry (feels wierd to have enough clean clothes for the rest of the trip..) 

Daily stats

Miles 67

Elevation gain 2400

Ave speed 9.8

Haiku

Wind farms are great things

Pedestrians not advised

One day left, can't wait!

Our favorite sign:

Update from Citta

Throughout our ride, we always keep in mind that we are riding for more than just ourselves and adventure. We started this journey to do some good in the world and to help those who need it most. 

We got an email today from the founder and executive director of Citta. He is currently visiting their school and hospital in Juanga, India. He told all of the kids about our trip and showed them our blog. They're all really excited about our adventure. Some of the funds we have raised may be used to pay for bikes to help the children get to school. Most of them walk long distances every day to get to class. 

Lets raise some more money to help these kids!

Notice that the child in front is wearing one of the bandanas that we wear every day. 

It's nice to see where your donations are making a difference: 

Help these kids

Reach into your heart

Bike for good

Into Yosemite Valley. Day 43

We started the day on top of Tioga Pass. We were so glad we had decided to get to the top of the pass the day before instead of doing it this morning like it had been in our original plan. It is always a relief to wake up to a downhill instead of an uphill!

This is just inside the entrance of Yosemite, finally here!

And the downhill was wonderful, of course. The elevation that had taken us 4 hours to get up the day before, took us probably 25 minutes coming down on the ther side. It was glorious. 

This is in Toulemne Meadows. Awesome. The meadows were beautiful and had delicate little ponds and streams running through them with mountains and tall trees all around. In the picture above you can see two guys sort of ahead of us on the road. They were trying to hitch hike, probably to another part of the park (it's huge, our entire and full day of riding was completely within the park), and jokingly held their thumbs out for us. We told them to hop on (also a joke, clearly that's impossible...) and I gave them a high five. People are fun and goofy sometime, it's great. 

And what we thought was downhill ALL the way to Half Dome (our destination in the park that night) was definitely not all downhill... at all. 

It seemed like we were always coming to "the last uphill before its all downhill" (ha!). And honestly if we hadnt been expecting it to be all downhill, it would have been a very normal climbing day. But also, I don't know what we were thinking! Yosemite is all mountains so we were bound to go up sometime. Regardless of our climbing expectation, it was an incredible ride. It was also great because we really did get to see a lot of parts of the park -- and parts that a lot of visitors never actually make it to, like Toulumne meadows that I mentioned and lots of other parts that are not in Yosemite Valley. And it was so so beautiful. 

We saw this sign which was pretty cool. Bears!!

And then we got to this sign... WE ARE SO CLOSE TO SAN FRANSISCO!! It would have been easy to turn right, but we really wanted to see Yosemite Valley. 

And the downhill into the valley was definitely ALL downhill. And was amazingly fun and frightening. We got going super fast, like above 30 or 35 mph, and cars would pass us and there was a huge cliff to the left the whole way. There was usually a small wall between us and the drop off, but at that speed it was kind of scary! But that wasn't the worst. The worst were the tunnels... Tunnels!! They were poorly lit because cars have headlights and do just fine in them, but we didn't have headlights! So there we were going over 30 and not able to see the pavement in front of us... AHH!! So we just had to trust the pavement. Luckily it was all smooth and there were no hidden potholes. If we had slowed down we might have had some kind of wreck with a car also.. Either way the tunnels were frightening. But there were only 3 or 4, and really only 1 that was long enough for us to be completely blind in. They were cool too though because we got to ride inside the mountain for a little bit!

^Alec headed into one of the shorter tunnels. 

And finally we were in the valley, surrounded by Half Dome, El Capitan, and the other rock formations that completely TOWER above everything. It's incredible. The pictures don't do the feeling you get from being below them, it's awesome! And it's crazy that people climb them... Alec was telling me about a guy the climbed Half Dome free solo (by himself and without ropes)... What?! That's amazing. We went hiking instead of watching the climbing movie the campground we were at was showing that night, but I hope I can watch it sometime. Cool stuff. 

Bear warning signs at our campground!

And I can't believe we didn't take any pictures of where we stayed! I don't know what was going on in our minds. We were really tired. Anyway, we stayed at a place called Curry Village. It's kind of a hotel/campground thing. There are individual tents (made of a canvas/rubber material sort of) that have a full bed and two twin beds in each. Each has outlets and a heater and a light and stuff, pretty cool. But no fans or air conditioner though. And I don't think I mentioned that it was HOT. The high in the valley was 105 I think, and it had to be close to that. And when we got to our assigned (rubber) tent at about 4 pm it was a sauna. We were SO happy that it had cooled off a lot by the time we came back later to go to sleep. But for the time being it was boiling inside there. 

You can actually see some of the tents behind me and that wonderful pine cone!

The formation of the tents was also pretty funny. I think there are about 600 of them also, by the way. But it was kind of like who ever designed the place grabbed a handful of those monopoly house pieces, dropped them onto a table, and that was the layout of the tents. Ha! They were really in no particular order, usually you could find consecutive tent numbers near eachother, but even that was a little difficult. But they weren't in any sort of row or repeating pattern, and all had random orientations, one's door opening directly to the side of another whose door opened directly to the back of another. It was kind of funny. It might have been worse and would have felt too regimented if they were all in rows or something. It was an adventure walking through the little tent neighborhoods. It was fun staying there. 

So we left to take COLD showers. They. Felt. Amazing. I usually take my showers just short of boiling, so for me to say a cold shower felt amazing is a very heavy statement. 

Curry Village also has a couple restaurants, an amazing ice cream place, a cool lounge with lots of comfy sofas and rocking chairs, and other decks and etc. So we hung out around there for a little while, ate some food, and then headed out to do some hiking. 

We took the park shuttle to hike to Mirror Lake first. It was supposed to be only a mile round trip, but we somehow made it more like 5. I'm glad we did though, the trail was fun and beautiful. Mirror Lake is a seasonal lake so a lot of it was dried up for the season, but the river that flows through it was beautiful and some smaller pools were formed as well. From our 5 mile detour we ended up on the wrong side so we had to walk across. And the water was so cool and refreshing, it felt incredible on our tired legs. (Alec mentions something about how amazing it felt about once every hour since we hiked out -- it's two days later now and he's still talking about it! On that note, sorry for the delays on the posts.)

After that we took a hike to the Yosemite Lower Falls right around sunset. They were really cool. Our pictures a little dark because of the lighting at dusk. It was great to be there, and by that time it had cooled off a lot so we weren't sweating buckets which was nice! 

Oh! And the coolest thing ever. We looked up at El Capitan (one of the big rock formations) at night and saw climbers' headlamp lights halfway up the rock!!! The formations are so big that most climbers take two days to make it to the top and sleep on the face of the rock. That would be so scary. It's so cool though. I would never do that I don't think, but those guys are incredible. Scary and so cool. 

The stars were also so bright and so beautiful. We're usually asleep by the time the stars come out, but I'm glad we were up long enough to see them in Yosemite. 

Daily stats:

Mileage:

Average speed:

Elevation gain:

Inside the valley,

Rock faces tower above,

Climber lights at night. 

Benton, CA to Tioga Pass! Day 42

Woohoo! We are camping tonight at a campsite right before the entrance to Yosemite National Park!! (Everything is full in the park and we have reservations for tomorrow night! We got here a day earlier than expected). We couldn't be happier. Today we had the most elevation gain of the trip (6,762 ft!) up to Tioga Pass and have about that amount of climbing to do between here and the ocean! Oh and 10,000 feet of elevation loss. HERE WE COME PACIFIC!

Okay, I'll back up. We woke up this morning in Benton, CALIFORNIA! Oh and we're incredibly happy to be in this state also. Not only are we excited to get to the ocean in a few days, but California is beautiful and we're excited to be riding through it. 

We are breakfast at the little diner that we'd had dinner at the night before. Yum, breakfast. With are stomachs full of pancakes for me and French toast for Alec we began the climb. We got going a little bit late, we were on our bikes at 9 AM, so it was already pretty hot outside. But despite the heat and the hill we were energized by how far we'd come and the beauty around us. 

There were elevation signs as we went up marking our progress. 

Our climb was also broken up into two parts, the first about 3000 and the second, tioga pass, was about the same but in a shorter mileage (steeper!). Here we are at the top of the first one.

And the downhill after was nice. First it was through an alpine meadow and then down through some tall TREES!! There were trees! So many trees. We pretty much hadnt seen trees for all of Nevada. So it was exciting. 

And then a lake appeared! Water was in short supply in the desert also... so coming across Mono Lake was wonderful and beautiful.

There's a lake through there! We did get closer though of course. 

And then we went through some road work, which was exciting because we got a huge lane to ourselves!! Ohhh yeah, bikes. 

After stopping at the gourmet food gas station (it actually was, Alec had fish tacos and I had a great asian salad. Yum) we started the trek up Tioga Pass. Aahhh it was steep. And long. But really beautiful. 

^Alec

^Allie

Continuing up to and past 8000

And 9000!

Waterfall!

As we continued up we (well of course) got higher and higher, and really could see amazing views of the mountains. The road basically clung to the edge of mountains above a deep beautiful valley. We were glad to be riding next to the mountain face instead of over the cliff! It would be a frightening road to ride down with the steep grade and the cliff directly off the road. 

Not to the top yet, still about 1000 feet to go! But still feeling good and invigorated by the views. 

Right after this the road wound back into the mountain peaks and away from the cliffs and we were riding next to lakes and trees and more beauty. 

And then finally...! We reached to top of Tioga Pass and the entrance to Yosemite!!

There were SO MANY mosquitos. The picture below is right after standing still from the picture above, and being attacked by the flies. 

Then, because we didn't have reservations in Yosemite for that night and everything was full (it's their busiest time of year!) we camped right outside the park. And it was chilly in the altitude! It was a great camp ground though and was right on a lake and surrounded by mountains. Amazing. 

Daily stats:

Mileage: 69.7 mi

Average speed: 7.9 mph

Elevation gain: 6762 ft 

Elevation we slept at: 9,900 ft

And it's (actually!) downhill from here to San Fransisco!

Slow up Tioga,

Highest Calfornia pass,

It's downhill from here.