Misty and I pulled into the tiny resort town of Jenner around 3:30 pm today, after having finished a cycling leg that we will never forget. I am grateful that it was sunny and gorgeous, but I regret not having had enough energy to really relax and enjoy the ride. The ride was characterized by much more traffic than we expected, no shoulder on the highway, several steep uphills on sections without guardrails, and multiple hairpin turns that were located at the bottom of hills. As a guest in the guestbook wrote aptly, this was a "white-knuckled ride on a mountain goat trail" that we were happy to survive.
We rewarded ourselves at a local restaurant with raw oysters and a sumptuous meal, and that was the end of our day. If you asked me right now, I don't know if I'd be the first person to enthusiastically recommend cycling this part without lots of training and mental preparation. That being said, we are on day 24 of cycling (30-6 days) as opposed to being fresh, as one fellow cyclist pointed out to us, so I think this opinion might be biased right now.
I'm going to bed, since last night I slept rather fitfully after having a face-off with a raccoon who was about to plunder our panniers. I remember coming back from the bathroom and shining my headlight on our bikes and having two little round reflections among the other reflections from our bikes and equipment. I stared at the thing, stomped a few times on the ground to show that I meant business (even though I don't have claws), and then watched it try to hide. I didn't go back into the tent until I was happy that it got my message, but even then I lay there listening to every little noise until I noticed the early birds started to chirp. Sigh.
