Bikation day 1 - Davis to Cloverdale

Amber and I just finished a six day tour of northern California. We rode 410 miles with about 25,000' of climbing while fully loaded. I was riding my Trek 520 touring bike with rack, rack bag, and panniers. Amber rode her Lynskey, also with rack, rack bag, and panniers.

We started in Davis and rode up to Cloverdale. It was almost 100 miles with 4300' of climbing. Unfortunately California decided to have a heat wave so we were looking at a high of 93F with 20 mph winds from the NNW. We started at 5am so we would complete the serious climbing before it got too hot. It worked pretty well except for the 200' kicker at mile 70 which was grueling.

We followed the Davis Double route for a while and our first stop was in Winters where we found a nice coffee shop was just opening. Coffee and a breakfast sandwich was wonderful.

Winters Coffee Shop

Our route took us West for the first 25 miles and the cross wind was so strong at times it seemed the only thing stopping the wind from blowing us over was the weight of the panniers. After that we turned Northwest which meant we had more of a headwind which was much safer.

Our next stop was at the Turtle Rock café which is in the perfect spot on a long gentle climb. Again, we got there just as they were opening. It's like they knew we were coming.

Turtle Rock café

We stopped in Calistoga for some Thai food. We stayed away from the spicy stuff because we still had 30 miles to go and we didn't know where the restrooms were. We soon picked up the 128 which is like twenty miles of cattle grid. I thank Amazon I had 35mm tires. It improved slightly after Geyserville (I pronounced it Geezerville). We took the last ten miles to Cloverdale nice and easy.

We got to the Super-8 about 3pm. There's nothing super about this motel. Like many of the bad motel chains, they're using the pandemic as an excuse to reduce services while at the same time increasing prices. Of the seven motels we stayed at, three were still advertising breakfast but not serving it, three were serving breakfast, and one didn't ever offer it. We had similar results with laundry.