Lazy Sunday / Armstrong Woods

Today is the first day where the weather is not really nice. The sky is completely overcast with clouds and it could be that there is some rain here and then. Also the temperatures have dropped considerably and it is only 17 degress, compared to over 30 Thursday.

The morning I spend looking for some WD40 and then cleaned my bike thoroughly. In the afternoon I progressed with some more chapters of “Moby Dick”, which I never read in English and it is not always easy, but it doesn’t fail to take you in another time and world.

Then I still wanted to do some miles on the bike and I followed the advice of my host Tim to visit “Armstrong Woods”, which was already recommended to me by someone of the Santa Rosa Cycling Club. This is a grove of giant Redwood tress about 15 miles northwest of Santa Rosa.

The place is really magical; despite the visitors it is very quiet and makes a very remote impression. However hard you try it is nearly impossible to get the scale of the Trees faithfully on a picture. Some of the trees here are about 100 m high.

Unexpectedly there is also an Arena in the woods and on the Internet you can find pictures of Marriages haven taken place there.

In order to have the impression to have really done something, I decided to ride up Armstrong Wood Rd which should ascent 400 hm. The height difference was not the real problem, but the road was super steep and even in my largest gear I had to struggle. Furthermore the asphalt was completely torn to pieces, which in the ascent was not too bad, but the descent was a bit uncomfortable.

The total ride from Guerneville and back may have been less than 20 km, but was very beautiful even on this cloudy day.