We got up and headed out from Florence at 7am and went straight South on 101. It was early enough that there was almost no traffic so I was able to buzz past the other guys and set a pretty good pace up through some of the mountains until we stopped in Coos Bay for breakfast. After that we continued to make our way South until we hit Gold Beach and then turned East for Grants Pass. This was a pretty damn scary road, but at the same time quite entertaining and exciting. Hwy 23 leads up and over the coast range from Gold Beach to Grants Pass and is a 1.5 lane road with no lane markings of any kind so we had to be on our toes to watch for any oncoming traffic. The road was also a total mess with all kinds of dirt, pine needles and rocks all over the place so the pace was rather slow as we were all being very careful. All of us except Mark H on his Multistrada that is. His bike was basically made for roads exactly like that so he was able to haul ass and basically dirt bike it all the way up the mountain. Once we reached the top there were 6 foot walls of snow on both sides of the road so it was like riding down a tunnel of snow. I was able to stick my right foot out a few times and drag my toe along the snow banks they were so close. Probably not the brightest idea in the world. We found out later that road had just opened that very morning, so our timing was impeccable. Oh yeah, did I mention that we had been rained on AGAIN? This was starting to get old.
From Grants Pass we hit I-5 and headed South once again. Once we passed Ashland and started to make our way up and over the Siskyou mountains the weather finally cleared up so a couple of us led by Bong cranked it up a notch and proceeded to tear ass up and over the mountains for the first real nice high speed run of the trip.
Originally we had planned to continue South on I-5 to Redding where we had hotel reservations, but we were running a little early (quite a change of pace) so once we made it into California we turned off onto Hwy 3 for some more back road goodness. It started out great as we made our way up into the mountains, but yet again, as we headed out of the mountains it started raining on us. We did manage to get a little bit of luck when a CHP passed us going the other way as we weren't going nearly as fast as before due to the rain.
Finally we made our way into the hotel in Redding and were told by the lady running the place that there was a good Mexican food joint "about a half mile down the road" so we set out on foot to find the place in the dark only to find that it had closed only minutes earlier as it was 9:08PM. Heaven forbid a restaurant stay open past 9pm. Not only that, but we were walking for a long ass way and were sure that it was a hell of a lot farther than a half mile. After finding that it was closed we called in a pizza order and called it a night.
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