Day 18: A good day

My Thermarest was much better last night but still a bit flat this morning.  I'm not sure if it still has a leak or if the cold weather was to blame.  Warmer weather will tell.

It was pretty cold and wet this morning.  Quite a bit of rain on the outside and condensation on the inside of the tent.  After a quick breakfast inside the tent (which was still drier than outside) I packed away a wet tent and sleeping bag hoping to find some sun later to dry them out.

We were on the road at 7 and headed for the park lodge to use the wifi in the lobby.  The only spot in the park where it is to be found.

Fancy Park lodge

We stayed in the very nice lobby for about an hour.  I was able to get caught up on the blog posts and touch base with folks about future accommodations. Randy caught up to us there and headed to the restaurant for breakfast.

We hit the road with the goal of clearing both Sequoia and King's Canyon National parks and getting back to lower elevation for the night.  The forecast for today includes some rain after 11 so we hoped to move beyond it before then.

While most of the day would be downhill, we were not quite done with the climbing. The lodge took us to 7000 ft and after some up and down we reached the high point on the park road a bit over 7300 ft.

Uphill to the lodge

Don't scare away the blue sky

Let the downhill begin

We continued to have some great views along the way and the sky was threatening to be blue.

A good way to spend the morning

Truly beautiful

As we rolled around a corner and past a meadow, we ran into a bunch of folks stopped alongside the road. One of the ladies waved me over to let me know that they were watching a bear in the meadow. I looked over and sure enough, there was a nice medium sized black bear strolling along.  I wasn't able to get a picture but I enjoyed watching for a while and then got back to the road.

Yesterday we heard of another pair of cyclists that were headed up the climb into the park. Today we caught up to them in the road and chatted for a bit.  They were young German ladies who are twin sisters. They started their ride in San Francisco and were headed through the parks.  They carried significantly less gear than we did and so the combination of a much lighter rig and eighteen year old engines meant we didn't ride with them very long.

There they go

About the time we met the Germans on the road it started to rain.  Very cold rain. By now we had passed the high point on the road and had a chilly descent toward King's Canyon.

A new park...a stamp must be close

While not exactly on our route, I lobbied for the two mile detour to the visitors center for another stamp and a lunch stop.

Down and out of the park

After lunch we returned to our route and started some truly fun downhill. The Adventure Cycling maps primarily direct you to side roads which generally are light on traffic.  They also tend to be twisty. Combine that with 15-20 miles of going downhill and it is a recipe for fun.

I realized yesterday that I had lost track of what day of the week it was.  My cold has mostly cleared up and my legs have gotten to the point that they are recovering well overnight.  The bottom line is that I am finally starting to feel good.  

The ride down from King's Canyon soon became very wet as a thunderstorm opened up on us. The combination of feeling good, giving up caring about soaking wet socks, and going fast downhill in a ridiculous amount of rain was super joyful.  I even yelled out loud a few times.  Definitely the best stretch of road so far.

Randy caught up to us at the bottom of this descent and together we all rode to our campground together.  After another shirt climb, I enjoyed another long fast stretch of slightly downhill and flats.  The road twisted around through not very populated sections.  At one point, I came around a corner at speed and found a HUGE, bright blue peacock in the middle of the lane in front of me.  I puckered a little and managed to swerve around it only to find a feral pig in front of me on the other side. Another quick dodge and I was past them both.  It is fun that you are never sure what you will find around the next corner.

While at King's Canyon, I learned that it is pretty much the only river valley left in the Sierras that does not have a dam.  I saw this one on the way to our day's end.  We will go up and around it tomorrow.

There are  dams in those hills

We stayed at a county campground that had a nice open field for drying all our wet gear.  The campground host stopped by to chat and insisted that we would not have to pay after riding so far.  A nice fellow and a nice bonus.  

Exactly what we needed tonight