Nordic Girl Adventures Part 1 - February

Well we are at December of 2019, this year has flown by so fast ! As I sit here and think about the year, I have embarked on so many adventures in my life.

Not only has my life been filled with athletic training, it was filled with travel, meeting new people and exploring new aspects of my life, i never thought would be possible.

I started out the beginning of the year, signing up for a race in California ! I figured driving to California not so far away, winter months, should be nice weather.. right ?   ah no... farther from the truth of what my naive thoughts would be.

February's journey took me through a 2 day trip through Washington, Oregon and finally landing in Crescent City. This was the start of the Redwood forest. Spent one night there, and one morning, cruising around the city on the bike.  Nice place, too cold, but we weren't staying, so it didn't matter all that much...

The next day took us to Fort Bragg. Small town, not sure what it had to offer, but we cruised around by the ocean side, where i was able to smell the salt air take some photographs of the beautiful rock cliffs of the shore. This is truly a  place I would like to revisit again.  When we got back on the road, we took the coast down and finally headed inland towards Orville and final destination was Gridley.

Well, Gridley was a iconic little american town, with big historic homes, orange groves in front yards and wild turkey's. Surrounded by the Buttes.  A beautiful rolling hillside covered in Almond farms, orange groves and grazing cows, horses and others

The town was originally discovered by Spanish & Mexican's in the 18th century, until a grain farmer named George Gridley, who owned a 960 acre farm moved in town became the largest landowner, so the town was named after him.

We rode the 100 km ride and it was a cool day, high of 12 C and wind gusts up to 100 km per hour. the wind was so bad, cyclist needed to tandem to break the wind. For the most part I was on my own, as there were fewer people in the 100 km ride.

We explored down in to San Francisco for a day. Met my cousin and his wife, and Olive. Olive the dachshund who gets to travel around ! She completely stole my heart.
The day in San Fran was interesting as i reflected on where my Great Aunt would have traveled and what she would have seen there in the early 1900's.

We saw the ' Little boxes on the hill side' after that famous song,  Lands End park, the Golden gate bridge and other interesting hilly neighbourhoods. Lunch at the pier, where Olive was able to join us, but had to sit in the carrier. She was good with that.

Going home back to Canada, was done in one day through the Shasta Mountains, back to Grants Pass, Oregon, Washington. Once we hit Redmond... SNOW.... that's a dirty word for something so pure and white !  Driving most of the night through Seattle and Bellingham was the worst snow, i had seen in a few years, and i was glad, i still had snow tires on.

It was a long haul, but after 18 hours on the road, we finally reached home.

to be continued.....