Anne, Sara & Sherry's Bike trip

After leaving the redwoods and heading south east to Berkeley, we drove past the Real Goods Solar Living Center. I can't believe we didn't take more photos. It was beautiful and interesting. To learn more about it click http://www.solarliving.org/

We got to Berkeley with about 45 minutes to get settled and head off to the conference. Sara had not registered for the conference and asked to volunteer to be able to participate. She got a great deal!

There were some amazing, confident folks at this event. The keynote speakers were dynamic and inspirational to say the least. Anne and I want to get the DVD to share some of this with others.

It was great to connect with the other BALLE On! riders finally. They deserve some REAL credit for taking on such a long trip!

It seems that Bryan had the future in mind when singing up for the conference...note the name tag (hee hee!)

We were served 7 fresh, local & mostly vegetarian meals during the conference. They were delicious! Really beautiful settings on the buffet tables (again didn't take photos).

We learned a lot about what others were doing and real life ideas of how to make a difference ourselves.

Saturday night after dinner and the evening keynote speaker, Paul Hawkin, (my favorite & an amazing guy, check out his website: http://www.paulhawken.com/paulhawken_frameset.html) we had a dance party with a local Afro Funk band. Too much fun!

Look at that talent!!

In one of Anne's breakout sections on Saturday, she met a man, Hank, who was working to help bring Californian families to farming, land-use issues/solutions etc. she can tell you more...

We all enjoyed our time at the conference and in Berkeley. Sara and I, skipped out on the last session and walked around Telegraph ave. Window shopped, watched a belly dancer and her musicians on the street and listened to two very talented women playing Middle Easter style music.

We woke up on Sunday morning and did a bit more looking around in Berkekey by the university. After packing up and saying goodbye to Rosco, our warm host at Piedmont House Youth Hostel, we headed to get some interesting food in the city before heading out. We got a bit of Sushi (yum) and walked down memory lane with Anne. You see, she and Lars spent an early part of their lives here. This is where they fell in love, got engaged, and it was an important part of their lives and growth together. (thanks for sharing Anne!)

We headed in the direction of home in the early afternoon, getting to a truck stop around midnight to get dinner. Not bad actually. We drove a bit further to a small campground near Crater Lake. MOSQUITOES is all I can say about that! I think we set a record for packing up and outrunning them in the morning.

It is such a beautiful place!

We headed north again to Bend to stay with Bomber, Greg and Anna. This is Sara's aunt, uncle and niece. What fun! We enjoyed a good meal, great coffee, played some cards, talked about adoption and generally enjoyed hanging out.

Thanks so much Bomber, we all felt so welcome. Hope to see you in Chelan this summer!

Tuesday morning Sara was able to visit Anna's school and see her end of the year performance before we headed north again towards home. The drive went amazingly fast and we laughed, sang and I feel, enjoyed being together for our last day of the trip, heading for home. We got to Chelan in time to drop Anne off to see Kai in his end of the year performance and graduation.

Thanks for sharing this experience with us everyone!

An ladies... thanks for the silly, challenging, inspiring, beautiful, wacky, entertaining, achy, cooperative, fun, creative, humbling, and memorable trip! I LOVE YOU BOTH!
~Sherry~

We chose to take our last two days and spend them in Humboldt county in the Avenue of the Giants state redwood park. This was my favorite campsite of the trip. Beautiful amazingly big trees and no mosquitoes! It was also nice to not take down the camp for a couple days!

Sara Monkey!

Cathedral Trees

We stopped at a roadside tourist attraction called Trees of Mystery (imagine it said in that deep movie announcer voice!)

Anne and I, took the tram ride to the top to take in the view.

After days along the beautiful Oregon coast, we got into California and headed into the woods. Riding a bike through these forests is such an amazing way to do it. Going this slow speed, in the open air is a spiritual experience.

We got a campsite in the northern redwoods park. Had a great day of riding.

Sara and Anne took off to the south to see the part we had not driven through, and I, Sherry, went north about 14 miles to the start of the alternative route. I had gotten a bad sunburn the previous 2 days and my lips was swollen and blistered and I needed to stay in the shade. I've been whining about it and I'm glad the girls are patient with me. : )

We took two days break from riding and stayed at a campground near Bandon Or. Bandon was a cute tourist town along a long jetty, just south of Coos bay. We took time to update the blog, and we each took some alone time.

After days of 24/7 with each other, today we were able to try out our non-violent communication skills in a great, open and healing way. Its good to know that we can understand each other and respect our difference.
Thanks Sara and Anne! I'm so glad to be traveling with you both!!

We took the next day for some short biking near the campsite and in the eveing splurged on a great Thai food dinner, Yum!

A frequent scene of Sara and riding in the car.

Look at our cute cabin and view!

An interesting dynamic with loads of 4-wheel & dune buggy folks. Definitely a different 'feeling'. As the guy at the coffee shop described it, "they are the folks that don't care about anything, but themselves". I drove down to the staging area and it was...amazing. Like an ant pile with ants that don't work as a team. In the 10 minutes I was down there, 2 ambulances came to take care of accidents. I saw two tiny girls, (under 5 year olds) riding on their own 4-wheelers (pink of course) It was CRAZY!!

Left in the early afternoon heading south, thinking we were only 10 miles from our next campsite, when we realized we were about 40 miles down, we just headed to Newport/Coos Bay to check out Mo's Bike Shop. (they had a copy of Lars' book!!)

Went to see baby Sea Lions south of Coos Bay. Sara's blood sugar was low. She fell out of the truck and took a cat nap.

We enjoyed a little lunch on a bench overlooking the Sea Lions. (See the sea lion below climbing up on the rock!)

We moved on to Bullard's Beach our home for the next few nights layover due to Memorial Day weekend traffic.