Day 27. California.

August 4th I took this photo of the bikes in our driveway, packed, fueled and ready to go with California as our destination:

 Today we made it! 5, 025 miles and a few detours later. 
  We even found a real California poppy!

We bid farewell to the dramatic Oregon coast and saw a lot evidence of firefighting activity as we headed South. We passed an Incident Base and saw many Fire Trucks from many different Western States. The Chetco Bar Fire is currently burning over 125,000 acres. We passed through the town of Brookings which is currently under a Stage 1 (be prepared to leave) evacuation alert. There was a combination of smoke and fog in the air for the first part of our route today but thankfully that was all we had to contend with. I feel very bad for the residents of these affected areas and grateful to the crews that travel into the fire zones to help contain the danger.

Once we were in California, we passed through part of the Redwood Park and ate our lunch in an Elk meadow! No Elk in sight!

We are spending the night in Ferndale, a lovely "Victorian" village. There are many beautifully restored original Victorian buildings, including the Hotel we are staying in. We have had a nice stroll around town and now it is time for Dinner!