Touring - Route Help...West Coast

Hi, so me and my friend our out of our first years of college, and somewhere around spring break we decided we want to do a tour. And we are planning on leaving later this week. But as lazy collge kids still havnt figured out a good route. He lives in Santa Cruz,CA and i in Chico,CA, we plan to leave from chico. We wanted to go north thinking it would be a lot better for stealth camping, and a lil more intersting. This is our first tour, and we plan to spend about 3-4 weeks out, living like bums. We want to head north towards washington. We heard that the coast is extremely windy though, so we arnt sure if we want to fight the wind the whole way. SO we are looking for a route that is pretty easy in way of wind/climbing. Any help would be greatly appreciated... thank you.

On the coast it's up 1 and 101 but maybe somebody else knows of alt routes. Yes, there will be plenty of wind. you could get off the coast in Washington and ride inland to Seattle. As far as climbing goes it's not that there are lots of huge hills, it's just that there's a lot of little to medium size hills. Always up and down. In NorCal you'll be off the coast for a while by Legget (biggest hill) into Humboldt County. A big plus about the coast is it's not 105 (that was the temp about two hours north of Garberville when I went). Touring always presents challenges, the wind can be really tough, but you gotta do it.

edit: Oregon coast is damn pretty I go it North or South and I think that is probabbly the windiest part of the entire coast from BC to Tijuana.

The coast is best run North to South because of attractions on the coast side, and winds coming from the North. That said there is no reason why you cannot still do it, it would just be tougher. Others have done it.

See if you can find a copy of a book called "The Pacific Crest bicycle trail" by Bill Paul. It is out of print but you can find it in online used book forums. Here is a copy for $7
http://www.alibris.com/search/detail.cfm?chunk=25&mtype=&wtit=pacific%20crest%20bicycle%20trail&qwork=4948579&S=R&bid=9067399646&pbest=7%2E40&pqtynew=0&page=1&matches=3&qsort=r
at Alibris books. Or you can do a search.

Anyway, the book chronicles a bicycle route, turn for turn from Canada to Mexico. It is all inland, near the mountains. You would be near Mt. Shasta, Crater Lake, Lake Tahoe etc. Some really impressive sights. It details mileages and the such. It would give you a lot of ideas which you could incorporate into an overall tour.

GO BIG!...How about doing a Grand Counterclockwise Loop Tour of CA, OR and WA?

Head north up the spine of the Sierras and Cascades, make a U-turn at Canada, cut west to the ocean and continue south down the coast. Chico would be a perfect starting point for this! Don't let a few mountains scare you off...you're still young, right? And you won't have to fight the wind heading down the coast. I estimate total time would take about a month.

You can check out Lassen Nat'l Park, Lava Beds Nat'l Monument, Crater Lake (killer climb!), North Cascades Nat'l Park, San Juan Islands and of course hundreds of miles of beautiful Pacific coastline.

FWIW...you can PM me and I'll try to describe the route I took.

(slowjoes book recommendation sounds interesting and similar to the my trip. I'm going to check it out.)

"U-Turn at Canada"...We're very nice people up here and our "west coast" is British Columbia ,another very nice place to be.....come on up..enjoy

"U-Turn at Canada"...We're very nice people up here and our "west coast" is British Columbia ,another very nice place to be.....come on up..enjoy

No offense...Canada's a great place :D .

Following Hwy 20 through the upper reaches of Washington and North Cascades National Park (Newhalen, Mazama, etc), we just couldn't find a road that would lead us to Canada. (Would have been nice to say I touched my wheels in Canada.:)) If anyone knows of a paved route from the Park to the border, let me know.