Native American chant to calm intense riding

We left Big Lagoon County Campground after having an uninspired freeze dry breakfast mash. The Mexican clan had the full BBQ theme going with Bacon and a vast breakfast feast like I haven’t seen before. Ours was pale in comparison, and not in comparison. So glad to have gotten rid of this pack. It did meet the expectations to be horrible.

We rode to Crescent City for late breakfast/lunch. We found an amazing bakery and enjoyed wonderful loaded breakfast bagels.

From there onwards to one of the more epic roads of this trip. One I wanted to do for 10-20 years. Road 199 from Crescent City NE towards Grants Pass. At first it was crowded with vacationers traffic but after a few passes it opened up, and we had a blast riding through it. At O’Brien we turned south in a no-man’s land shortcut through endless burned forest that lasted probably an hour of mountain riding to Happy Camp - nothing happy there, only a scorching heat and some town road construction. The weird thing is that there’s not much of a town, yet there’s town road constructions. That’s what happens when you lie about happy camping. Someone told us it used to be a miners’ town. Maybe. It turns out this was the infamous Slater Fire that we road through. Fun roads, no cars, no (live) trees.

To escape the heat, we flew over 96 to I-5 on the way to Ashland. A super fast run on a road with no cars, perfect pavement, and perfect curves. We had blast, and cut the ride by probably 30 minutes. It was exhilarating. Our tires looked like race bikes tires. Not to be repeated.

The plan was to find high elevation camping at Mount Ashland. We stopped by the same gas station from the first scorching day to fill up, and onwards to Menotti market in Hornbrook, CA. It had nothing. A couple of shelves. But they had cucumbers and tomatoes. Upon paying we received a discount for the “lousy cucumber” according to the store owner. Well, a heavy French speaking hippy in the middle of nowhere with a cute “Pinguin” mutt dog and a proper French attitude towards food. We had a good chat. We are the first Israeli/Jewish people he met there. He knew “Shalom” though.

He suggested that we skip the Mount Ashland camp and instead camp at the cool hippy, not expensive, Jackson Wellsprings hot springs campground outside Ashland. We adhered to his suggestion. And wow that was an amazing experience.

A totally hippy spiritual place. Clothes are optional in the springs. Meaning we were all naturally naked. They had a cool band playing on the other side of the wall (we didn’t go, just heard it over the wall) while naked in the hot springs. There were hot and medium, pool like hot springs, and saunas. As we step into the wet sauna (steam room) - a dark, small room with about 6 invisible people there, suddenly someone started a chanting a beautiful, mesmerizing Native American chant. Others joined with hmmm, breaths and tapping. This was completely spontaneous. Magical. It went for a while - until closing at 10PM. Wow, I can still hear the chant.

This was a perfect and unexpected finish to an amazing day. Intense, adventurous, with coastal chill, challenging fun roads, scorching heat, French attitude, wrapping it up before bed time with a magical steamy chant.

Adventure 101 by the book. Love it.