Bicyclists honoring the troops

Today my plan was to travel west to the Pacific Coast, having concluded that I would definitely have to pass up Yosemite and Redwoods National Parks if I hoped to get to Los Angeles in time for my flight back to Philadelphia.
I got off to a bit of a slow start by traveling 30 miles east when I should have been going west, but other than that it was another good day.

I stopped for lunch at a rest stop where there were couple of bicyclists. They looked like they were in their late twenties of early thirties. One of them came over to ask me where I got the little handle that attaches to pots so you can remove them safely from campstoves. He was the dirtiest human being I think I have ever seen. He looked like neither he nor his once-white T-shirt had seen soap and water for a very long time, but he was friendly, cheerful and talkative. He said that he and his partner were riding their bikes in honor of the troops who had been killed in Iraq or Afghanistan.
"How long have you been doing this?" I asked.
"Since 2004.We've actually ridden .over 50,000 miles all around the west. In fact at 10 miles per casualty we're actually about a thousand miles ahead of the casualty count."
"How did you get into this?"
"It was actually my partner's idea. We were at a ceremony honoring war dead who were being brought back home, and there were war protesters outside. We thought that no matter what one thought about the war, we should still be honoring guys who died for their country, so this is our way of doing it."
We talked a while longer and I noticed later that they did have signs on their bikes indicating that they were riding in honor of the troops.

We also talked a bit about our travel experiences. They said that some people did give them a little money to help support them on the road, but mostly they have found cheap ways of doing things; they knew about campgrounds that were cheaper than anything I had found or they just slept out. They had a campstove that used regular gasoline, which was the cheapest fuel available.
He acknowledged that he did get tired of doing this, but I think they might have been continuing at this point on pure momentum and weren't sure what to do next with their lives.

At Whiskeytown I stopped at the Visitors Center to ask how the town got its name. The pleasant park rangers explained to me that during the gold rush one of the mule drivers accidentally dropped a barrel of whiskey into the creek, which then became Whiskey Creek. The town then took its name from the creek on which it was located. The town had had a couple other names as well, but this is the one that stuck.
I also passed through Hayfork and Mad River on the road to Eureka, which was right on the coast. I suppose that name came from someone  who was also looking for the coast and finally found it when he got to the place that he named Eureka.

I also passed thru Carlotta (pop.345), whose most noticeable feature was a sheep in the front yard of one of the houses - probably a family pet.

I had never driven a road quite like this one before. To describe it as snakelike would not be to do it justice. Pretzel-like would be more apt. It twisted back and forth, did horseshoe turns, and generally kept me very, very alert at the wheel. At many turns I was focused so fully on staying on my side of the white line that I would be surprised to see a car or something larger coming right at me in the other direction and then turning to follow the road at the last minute. I don't think I even had time to be scared at the time because each event passed so quickly. It did definitely make me nervous, however. I thought of the 40,000 Americans that die every year in road accidents and how most of them are just driving along minding their own business, when without any notice at all they are in a situation where they know they are going to die. I don't dwell on this, but this road certainly brought it to mind.

While I was navigating one more turn, I looked up and there was the Pacific Ocean. Eureka, I found it! It was quite an exhilarating experience
I drove on through Grizzly Creek State Park and into Humboldt Redwood State Forest, where I stayed at a very beautiful campground surrounded by huge redwoods.