July 12, 2006
Day 23: To Ukiah-Dale State Park
The temperature got down to 40F overnight. Crisp and cool. I got on the road at 8:20AM, wearing my rain suit to keep warm and to keep the mosquitoes from biting. The first couple miles was an easy climb to the 7392 foot summit.
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Then a cold descent to 6000 feet elevation. The sky was overcast with occasional sprinkles of rain. I biked through the first of several large burn areas. The Blue mountains had some huge forest fires in recent years. Many of those areas are only just starting to regenerate.
Today's route has a huge net descent. I expected this to be an easy day. Instead there were several non-trivial climbs in between long descents. I counted three 200 foot climbs and three 400 foot climbs.
The road stays above 5000 feet elevation until I was 13 miles from Ukiah (3353 feet elevation). Forest road 73 is above 5000 feet elevation for 54 miles! It's a "road to nowhere" so I wasn't surprised that it has no traffic. I saw a car about once every 10 minutes.
At one point in the afternoon I rode more than 10 miles in a continuous burn area. That was a BIG fire!
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I was tired and hungry when I finally got to Ukiah. It's the most depressing town I saw on this tour. I ate a very late lunch at the bar/cafe, arriving at 3:45 PM. The town has 3 stores selling food but all 3 had a poor selection and very old merchandise. One store gave me a free box of breakfast cereal because it was a year past the expiration date. The next section of this tour is in remote areas and I was hoping to have a better selection when stocking up on food.
I camped at Ukiah-Dale state park (3200 feet elevation), 3 miles south of Ukiah. It's in a forested canyon, a completely different environment than the open range land surrounding Ukiah. My site was on the bank of Camus creek. The park doesn't have showers, so I made my own shower. I camped next to 3 other touring cyclists. One had a Gold Rush recumbent bike. They started their tour in Sunriver, just south of Bend. The park is next to US 395 but there is very little traffic. Highway noise wasn't a problem.
Today's high temperature was only 75F. It was cloudy for most of the day. I lost 4000 feet elevation today but still had a lot of climbing mixed in with long descents.
Distance: 63.4 mi. (101.4 km)
Climbing: 2500 ft. (758 m)
Average Speed: 10.1 mph (16.2 km/h)
Maximum Speed: 41.1 mph (65.8 km/h)
Today's ride: 63 miles (101 km)
Total: 994 miles (1,600 km)
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