Days before reaching the California border across the Siskiyou summit, along I-5, the decision to transfer to the California Coast had already been made. I had seriously been considering a shift to the coast since leaving Roseburg– where upon my departure from the city– a motley band of bikers strongly (and kindly) recommended that I descend the coast instead of I-5. “You’ll find good people there!” were the obvious words of experience coming from one of them, the others quickly agreeing with him. As the days passed, the miles continued compiling, and the California border drew closer and closer, helpful people kept recommending the coast over the I-5 corridor. People warned me that the California Highway Patrol would not tolerate a walker along given stretches of I-5 (where CA Hwy 99 would not be an option to me); Oregon road crews alerted me to the presence of cougars and bears in remote, wooded stretches where I may have to try to pitch a tent somewhere near the road; and, Couchsurfing.org seemed to hold very few promising connections between Ashland and Redding.
I’ve received mixed messages both through the planning stages of this walk as well as during the walk. Some have been worth taking seriously, others have been brushed aside– I always let intuition make the final call. Intuition really called on me to listen to the recommendations to walk the coast, however, and by the time I’d reached Grants Pass, where host JB, a retiree originally from California, showed me a much more detailed map of California’s northern coastal highway 101, also strongly recommending it over I-5, I’d finally settled on the decision to walk the coast.
Highway 199 descends from Grants Pass directly to Crescent City, California, at a distance of 82.3 miles. As Medford TV stations had been eagerly been anticipating my arrival, however, and as I’d always wanted to reach California by climbing across the Siskiyou summit, I decided that I’d simply split the walk into two legs, adding distance in the process. My first leg would have me continue 60+ miles down Oregon’s hwy 99 and into Hilt, CA. The second leg would take me further from my ultimate destination of the White House, add miles (and days) to my descent into San Francisco, and have me crossing the California border a second time– this time from Brookings, Oregon– in a 26-miles descent to Crescent City.
Once the decision to walk the California north coast was made, there was no looking back– just proceeding with this modification to the plan. As walking across America could validly be done by starting in San Francisco or LA, cities I’d eventually be arriving to anyway, I found it unimportant that I’d decided to split my north-to-south descent into two legs, especially since I’d be adding distance, overlapping the latitude at the California border, and coming from further west in the process.
After very slowly taking the last step across the clearly marked I-5 California border and then proceeding the next mile into Hilt, I received a ride back to the Medford area from Kathy, the mother of Tia, a wonderful friend I’d been staying with since reaching Medford. From Medford, I would wait two more days to meet up with my parents, who were scheduled to drive through Medford on October 22nd, on their way to California. The afternoon of Thursday, 10/22, I boarded a shuttle from Medford to Brookings, and reached Brookings after dark on Thursday, Oct. 22, whereupon I immediately proceeded to the local Episcopal Church’s Mission, just south of town, as they’d invited me in for the evening.
Immediately upon arriving to the coast, everything about the decision to walk the hwy 101 corridor into San Francisco coast just seemed to feel oh-so smilingly right– and there would be no looking back…