California Coastal Camping, 800 mile ride

The first post will be a post about the trip itself, And the next post will be about the bike and how it performed.

Well I went on my first camping trip on the CBR and it was pretty interesting.. I decided to head to the coast to go camping right next to Fern Canyon where they filmed parts of Jurassic Park (Old movies, But if you grew up during that time or had any children you most likely seen it).

Anyways, It was 10 hour ride there, and around 7 hours on the way back, and 800 miles round trip.


I decided to leave at 5 AM on Tuesday morning. This is how the bike looked prior to leaving all loaded with the awesome rack that Goobersbro made.



(I love how flash blocked out my plate for me and I didn't even need to edit it, lmao)


This is the route I had planned out so I could go by and see Clear Lake and take the twisty HWY 20.

https://www.google.com/maps?saddr=C...ydgqNwVyw&t=h&mra=dpe&mrsp=2&sz=8&via=1,2&z=8

It was a cold morning so I was dressed to freeze my ass off, but when I finally got to the coast and got to kick back on the beach it was worth it.

I first reached the coast at Fort Bragg, CA. Left the town a little ways and headed North up to a pretty nice beach.




(I wouldn't wanna live on that house in that 3rd picture.. They are gonna so fall in the ocean one day like all the other coastal houses.)

After taking my smoke break I kept going up HWY 1 along the coast heading north. The fog was bad because it was the morning, most of it cleared out during the day but not much of it. The road was nice and clear with not many cars because it was a weekday and a great day to be on the coast.




Then the next 180 miles or so I didn't really stop much because the coastal HWY 1 ends not to far from here and turns into the HWY 101 which takes you away from the coast for a little while.

Finally I get to my campsite road 10 hours after leaving my house, so happy to be there and just hoping they had spots open. First thing I see is the sign that says "Campground Full", Which I didn't believe so I decided to take the ride out there.

It's not any normal ride out to the campsite though, You need to cross creeks, and drive on a gravel/dirt road for 6 miles to the campsite.

The first thing I see when I turned onto the road was Elk. In the part of California I live in, We don't have Elk in our mountains so its a whole new thing for me. These things are huge when you see them in person. They were behind like a wall of greenery so it was hard to get them in the picture, But around 20 were grouped up eating together right here. They also walk the beach where I camped, But I didn't get to see any on the beach. ><



2 of the creeks I had to cross, Luckily there were spots I could go where it wasn't too hard to cross. Tires were slipping around on wet rocks though.




Yeah I know they are small but I still hate crossing anything with wet rocks.

Luckily I arrive at the campground and there are 2 spots open. So I decided to take one which was sorta blocked by the wind so I didn't have to deal with crazy wind all night coming in the tent.

After getting my tiny tent set up this is how my campsite looked.

It was a sand spot which was nice, but riding the bike through the sand was kinda interesting.. Front tire sunk so quick, lol





The beach was just a short walk away, just over a tiny little hill and down the beach. I could hear the ocean waves all night long which was pretty nice.




After I got settled I decided to head down to Fern Canyon, which is 2 more miles down that ******************** dirt road. I ended up totaling 16 miles driven on dirt/gravel this ride.

This is the walking trail to Fern Canyon.



Then finally.. Fern Canyon.









The night got cold, I went to bed around 6 PM and was awake @ 2 AM and it was raining like crazy. I planned to leave that campsite early and head up to Oregon but the weather was bad. Everyday the forecast is the same, they say 10%, it turns out the day I'm there I'm lucky enough to get the 10% chance of rain.
So instead of heading north more, I packed up my campsite like I planned and just did a change of plans to head home since I was pretty sore from that 10 hour ride the day before.

Leaving the campsite wasn't fun though.. I had 6 miles of dirt to come in, and then leaving it turned out to be 6 miles of mud.

I was happy to get back on pavement compared to that mud road, and the water on the road cleaned my bike a bit, But I still think I have to clean it sooner or later. -,- How the bike looked when I got back home, lol




Anyone wonder what the rear inside fender thing is for? To me it looks like a dirt collector and doesn't do very well blocking any dirt..




Anyways, I just wanted to post this about my little ride I had. The next post will be about how the bike was during the ride.. Some things sure did shock me and I didn't expect it.

My ride home was boring and don't have much to say about it.. Except..

Don't ever leave the coast @ 2 AM! Leaving the coast was very bad.. I mean bad.. Going over the mountain range leaving the coastal area was so foggy I couldn't see 6 inches in front of me. Really sucked trying to drive in fog that thick, I was alone on the road besides a few cars and tons of 18 wheelers. I was pretty much driving so slow just so I could see where I was going.. We need fog lights on our bikes. lmao