PedalingWalrus

The height of forest fire season worries me a little bit...mostly due to the amount of pollution in the air when biking. I will have to observe how whether this season will be the first dip down from previous trend setters or whether it will continue in the upward pattern.

djb

I can see the concern, i guess really all you can do is to keep up on the news, and also be aware / choose carefully your flight and the cost penalties for changing a flight.
I would hope that being on the coast would be a big help air quality wise, but to be honest, I sort of noticed the news last year but didn't totally keep track. I do however remember the " orange sky " thing from San Francisco, someone I knew from Montreal who moved to sf put a photo up she took.
So I guess as you say, that we hope this year isn't as bad vs the worsening trend.

PedalingWalrus

Yeah. My son lives in Mountain View and they fled SF area last year due to the air quality and spent 2 weeks with us here in Maine

rmball28

Cycling the Pacific Coast: The Complete Guide from Canada to Mexico

I found the book useful.

staehpj1

If that is the Vicky Spring book I enjoyed it for getting psyched up for the trip, but found the AC and ODOT maps more useful. If it is the Tom Thorness book I have never actually seen it. In general I find books less useful for trip planning nd awkward to use when on the trip. They can be nice to read before the trip though..

PedalingWalrus

I find books fun when in the tent or while eating dinner in the campground. Otherwise I like to leave everything else to chance. After all it is a straight one way trajectory that we're doing so where we end up and when is up to normal daily circumstances. :-) that is the beauty of touring for me: Roam Free

staehpj1

On he coast it is helpful to know where the next hiker biker site or other services are, but I didn't find a book the best way to know that. History of the area and things like that maybe, but I tend to read that stuff from at home before the trip or discover it along the way from word of mouth, exhibits, plaques, museums, etc.

Not knocking it if someone else finds books useful or entertaining along the way though. I personally just don't tend to.

jamawani 

Why would Oregon or California parks open up showers when they are facing a desperate water shortage and a huge budgetary shortfall?
If anything, I suspect services may be further curtailed.

California State Parks have been in a multiyear cycle of budget cuts only exacerbated by the Covid shutdown.

PedalingWalrus

we may have to do a dust bath like the pigeons do ;-)

Tourist in MSN

I had the guidebook for Pacific Coast, we found it useful. I also sent an e-mail to OR and asked for info, they mailed their cycle map to me before I left home. I found that map very useful.

I never found a really useful California map, but the map of state park locations was the only paper California map I bothered to carry.



I did Pacific Coast seven years ago, that is the last time that I did a bike tour where there was a route, either by book or by ACA mapped route. My tours in the past seven years were routes that I cooked up by looking at some maps. Thus, no guidebooks or ACA maps available.

The exception to that would be that I rode the length of Florida Keys as part of a much bigger route, the Keys part of that tour were along an ACA mapped route, but we did not get the map. Instead I looked up the locations for Publix and Winn Dixie stores in the Keys while still at home to put in my GPS so we knew where the grocery stores would be once we got to the Keys. And the state park campgrounds were in the Open Streets basemap in my GPS.

rmball28

It is the Thorness book. It is available on kindle and can be read on a phone so it is not too hard to read on a trip.

Tourist in MSN

My Pacific Coast trip was my last tour without a dynohub. I got a bit tired of searching out nearby vacant campsites that I could plug stuff into.



Using a 3 into 1 adapter, charging up four AA NiMH batteries, a Li Ion camera battery, and the USB cable off the bottom of the photo when to my tablet.

Tourist in MSN

If I could give you any brilliant insight on that, I would. But if it is a bad season, you might want to have a plane ticket that you can get a refund on or apply to a different trip later.

When I did my trip starting in late May and Jun, we picked that to avoid the crowds, avoid the RVs on the narrow California roads, etc. We rolled the dice in that we had a much higher probability of precipitation that early. Thus, my experience on that route is not applicable to your concern.

If you have any good friends that are in medical field or industrial, if they can get you a few N95 masks that might be a useful thing to have if it gets really smoky. But with the pandemic, those might still be in short supply.

Wearing a mask like that to keep out airborne contaminants, the mask is only as effective as the seal between your face skin and the mask. If you have a beard, you can't get a good seal between the mask and your skin. In that case you might be just as well off wearing a folded bandana mask with a few rubber bands holding it onto your face.

If it is really smoky, I hope your flashing taillights are really bright. I have ridden in fog but never in heavy smoke, knowing that I had flashers on made me less nervous.

staehpj1

If there is smoke bad enough that I am worried about being seen I have long since stopped having fun due to inhaling smoke. Smoke levels that you barely notice visibly or maybe don't see at all can be pretty unpleasant. I have cut backpacking or bike trips short due to smoke a couple times. Once it was only the smoke and once it was HAPE that I suspect distant smoke (not thick enough to be visible) and the heat both contributed to. Both times were pretty miserable, both were bad for my health, and one was probably downright dangerous.

djb

I found Guatemala especially, and Honduras too, bad for really bad smoke spewing trucks and buses, and ended up getting sick from it. Had read of other riders too experiencing this, so I sure as hell wouldn't want to be riding through the "San Francisco orange sky" thing, and can relate to how unpleasant it would be.

But honestly would have to be there in person to judge what is too much.

Tourist in MSN

I obviously was not clear with my comment. I started to write about particulate masks, and as I was writing about particulate masks I remembered a few stories about people evacuating in heavy smoke. Nobody by choice would go biking when the smoke is so heavy that visibility is poor. But fires can move fast and if you have to evacuate, you have to go NOW. Any emergency crews will be dealing with people that have no transportation, if you can travel on a bike, you are not as critical to emergency crews as the people that have no transportation.

TooLegit

I was curious to see if this trip happened? I wonder how the fires have affected your plans.

PedalingWalrus

I ended up circumnavigating Denmark instead.

TooLegit

I’d take that trip over a smoky CA tour any day! That sounds awesome!

staehpj1

Yeah, looks like a great choice. The US West coast can be nice, but there were a number of reasons this year wasn't the best. The Denmark trip looked awesome judging by the pictures.