USA - Canada - Mexico 2016 - Day 46

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Friday, 21 October 2016 - Eureka, California - Sutherlin, Oregon

Today was supposed to be another of those nice rides winding through the mountains up to Crescent City then up over Grants Pass but again, the weather gods had other ideas for us. Must have been punishment for my saying what a great day yesterday was.

We left Eureka with the temperature at about 16 degrees C, a heavy fog and just starting to rain. Needless to say, the wet weather had gone on in preparation. The further we went the worse the weather. We reached Crescent City with it still raining so instead of going to see what we had planned, it became a fuel stop and we continued on to Grants Pass.

On the way we found a nice rest area so stopped for our morning coffee. Now I have to explain something here as I had a question the other day as to why I was saying "We stopped for smoko" when that person knew we didn't smoke. For those of you who are not Australian, way back when most people seemed to smoke, the morning and afternoon breaks were known as "Smokos". While a lot less people smoke these days, "Smokos" are still part of our language. Anyway, made the coffee only to find that the person at the motel who I asked to fill the thermoses with"fresh boiling water" just filled them from the hot tap. One was luke warm which I assume was the first filled and the second was a little hotter but still too cold. We have struck this a few times where the motels actually have no facility to boil water, just a machine to make brewed coffee. Even though tea bags are available, the supplied "Hot" water often isn't. At this rest area they had bear proof rubbish bins. The groundsman told us a big black bear used to visit the area and knock the bins over, but we saw no bear today.

We climbed most of Grants Pass, with the temperature dropping to 14 degrees C, in the rain but that cleared only for us to be stuck in a loooong line of traffic as there was a truck ahead that had collided with the guard rail and was hanging over the edge of a steep drop blocking one traffic lane. Funny story here, American drivers are very polite, especially when driving on dual lane carriage ways. In Australia, when there is a lane closure, the majority of the traffic merges into one lane early but lots of other cars will continue on in the second lane to get to closer to the head of the queue before merging, leaving the earlier merging drivers frustrated. Americans don't usually do that, moving into one lane in an orderly fashion. I was in the single queue and I held the queue to let a semi-trailer in in front of me. He waved on and I wondered why but soon realised, as he just stayed alongside his rightful place in the queue, effectively blocking half adozen cars that tried to jump the queue. At one point where there was an incoming on-ramp, one impatient driver slotted onto that and passed the three or four cars in front of him but by that time the truck driver had seen him and deliberately blocked him from going further. I cheered but the truck driver copped some abuse when we eventually passed the accident and the drivers he blocked got alongside him.

More rain, then the last 30 or so miles to our stop in Sutherlin was fine weather. A few photos but you have seen fog and fall colours before but that was our day.

Tomorrow we head for Portland hoping for fine weather; two nights to go.

422 klms today, total to date 17,094 klms.