29 miles in 3.5 hours
I started the day and rode up to the town of Morro Bay. I went to a little coffee house in Morro Bay for a few hours and updated the site. This was a pretty cool coffee shop, and I recommend it to anyone passing through.
Recommended
I then left there around noon, and grabbed some lunch at a nearby McDonald’s. I then headed up towards my campground for the night at San Simeon. The day started out very well, and I passed through some nice towns.
The normal views from these beach towns.
Downtown Cayucos - Don't let the Morro Bay sign fool you.
Looking back at Cayucos. Note Morro Rock to the right of the pic.
Ocean
Old farmhouse and moo cows.
The ocean sure does seem to be pretty big.
Of course, as the day wore on these horrible headwinds started, and just continuously got worse. Eventually, I was going 6mph on flat ground, and 4mph up small hills. This really takes a lot of the fun out of bike touring – at least when you are going up a hill you are gaining potential energy which you will convert… pedaling into the wind doesn’t get you anything. I pedaled on though, and stopped for an early dinner in the town of Cambria because I knew that the campground was pretty isolated.
I must go on.
More countryside.
Houses on a hill in Cambria.
Yowza. (Not shown: In towns like Gordo in a few days it would be over a dollar more expensive than this).
I finally rode by the campground at around 4:30, and saw that there were already a bunch of other bike tourers set up in the spot. My first thought was ‘shit’ because I didn’t want the hiker/biker spots to be full. Luckily when I reached the gate the woman said that they don’t have a set number of sites that they give out, as many hiker/bikers can cram into the spot as can fit. Not only that, but it was only $2, the cheapest spot to date.
I paid the money and rolled down to meet four people already there. Jamie and Adrian were a couple from San Diego who flew to Portland and were riding back down the coast towards home, and Deena and Juli (I think?) had just graduated from Cal-Berkeley and were riding from San Francisco to Santa Barbara. They were all really friendly, and I was happy that I met them all. We sat around and laughed and Adrian rode up to the town of San Simeon (a couple miles away) to buy everyone beer. At sunset, I walked to the beach and took yet another video of a sunset over the pacific.
Ocean at the campground.
Another shot at the campground.
Sunset behind a rock.
I walked back to find two more people there, Tim and Melissa, who were also going north. They also had a third person in their group, another Tim, who was out getting them food and beer.
It was a late night of good times, and was the only night there were a significant number of people at any hiker/biker spots on the California coast. We had a nice night despite being yelled at by the ranger, and I met some new northbound friends.
Darkness
Light