Day 16: Manchester Bay to Bodega Bay. 69 miles!

Today Hank and I broke two records!  Longest riding day, miles and time on the road.  We also broke our elevation gained record!  Today we climbed a total of 5,773 feet.  No wonder I'm so tired!

Last night was weird!  At 2:30 in the morning a helicopter hovered over the campground.  It was only a couple hundred feet above me!  Woke me out of a dead sleep and it flew around for about 5 minutes.  I have no idea why, but it definitely got my adrenaline going in the middle of the night. 

This morning I had breakfast and got ready to go as quickly as I could because I knew today was going to be a long day.  I looked at the maps last night and saw that the next campground with a shower was right around 70 miles away.  There was one without a shower that was closer but I don’t like trying to sleep after sweating all day and not getting a shower.  So after breakfast Hank and I got rollin’!

It was a beautiful day for riding down the California coast!  The wind was at our back, the sun was out, and the hills weren’t too bad.  Well the hills weren’t too bad at the start.  There were some pretty intense hills toward the end of the day.  The highest hill of the day was fairly scary.  Hank and I were up around 500 feet above the ocean basically on a road that was carve out of the edge of a cliff.  There was no guard rail!  So if the wind hit me just right or a car bumped me a little Hank and I would tumble to the ocean 500 feet below.  There were some tense moments, but we made it!  Around 2 o’clock today we passed Jenner California, which happened to be the 700 mile point on our journey (roughly), which means we are a little over halfway now!  Thursday we will arrive in San Francisco and stay for two nights with a full day to play around in the city.  That will be a lot of fun! I love San Francisco!

Hank told me that he didn't get all of yesterday's pictures posted last night.  Here they are:

 I figured out my phone does a Fish Eye photo.  The picture below is without the fish eye.

 Hank enjoyed these flowers while I enjoyed a mocha in Mendicino

The post Hank is leaning on has the mileage to cities around the world on it.

For now I need to go to sleep.  I rode for almost 7 hours today and I am exhausted!