INTRODUCTION

This blog was originally a website kept by Scott Campbell, one of my Red Dirt Pedaler bike club friends. Since then it has become defunct, the server that hosted it no longer available. Thus, I am converting the website copy and photos to a journal-type blog in 2014 while in a temporary cycling hiatus. Hard for me to believe that I rode the west coast so long ago. Where did those 14 years go?

THE PLAN
Susan Walker and her daughter, Jessica, are spending the month of September and the first week in October 2000 bicycle touring in the Pacific northwest—a change from Susan's original plan to tour with Scenic Cycling, Inc. The Scenic Cycling tour became seriously pricey, so it's now down to (or up to) mother/daughter! (With a lot of planning help from Tom Kirkendall and Vicky Spring’s book Bicycling the Pacific Coast: A Complete Route Guide, Canada to Mexico and route maps from the Adventure Cycling Association.)

The two plan on camping in the hiker/biker sections of state, provincial, or local parks. But, when they tire of the dark, drippy, mossy forests of the northwest, they will spend the night in a hostel. And, on occasion, they will treat themselves to a night in a motel. They plan on saving $$ by preparing their own breakfasts and suppers and by buying lunch and snacks along the way.

Susan will meet Jessica in Vancouver, B.C. on Sept. 5. The two will assemble their bikes at the airport and then spend the night in Vancouver, courtesy of cyclists from the Warm Showers Cyclists’ Hospitality List.

Their full itinerary is shown on the cover, but here is their general plan: They will take a ferry from Vancouver to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, pedal to Victoria on the southern tip of the island, take another ferry to Port Angeles on the Olympic Peninsula, and then follow Rt. 101 around the west side of the peninsula and down the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and northern California.

At Fort Bragg in northern California, they will leave the coast, taking the Skunk Train inland to Willits, California, where Susan’s sister, Sarah, lives. After a day or so with Sarah, they plan to pedal south through the Napa Valley (Calistoga, Napa State Park, etc.) and then cut back across the coastal range to Point Reyes Station and Jessica's house in Inverness on Tomales Bay.

The two will each be fully loaded (ha, particularly in wine country!) for a self-supported tour. Jess will ride a Trek 8500 mountain bike with Rolf wheels and slick road tires and pull a BOB trailer. Susan will ride a Litespeed Blue Ridge touring bike outfitted with front and rear Arkel-Overdesign panniers.

Susan's assembled bike at the Vancouver Airport

Susan will carry a little e-mail Pocket Mail computer so that armchair cyclists and friends can follow the daily progress of this mutha/dauta team online through the their web page. Susan will also send photos back to the webmaster, but must first get them developed at 1-hour developing places so there will be a lag between the copy and the illustrative photos.You may also e-mail Susan on the road to ask questions and say hello. 

Note: The original photos were taken with a cheap film camera, were scanned from the originals, were copied off the website, and then copied again from a paper journal, so all are a bit fuzzy. Apologies.