Bike Touring Day 4: Plaskett Creek to San Simeon

Day 4 turned out to be a short one.  It was sort of liberating to know we would only be going half of our usual mileage.  Our early plans were to go from Plaskett Creek Campground to San Luis Obispo in one day.  Rob's uncle and aunt, who live in Atascadero (not terribly far from SLO), were hopeing to host us for an evening.  It sounded like a great idea, so we wanted to find a way to squeeze it in.

Rob worked out a plan to ride to Atascadero instead of SLO.  He recommended splitting the ride from Plaskett Creek to Atascadero so that it wouldn't be too long of a ride, with too much climbing.  It seemed reasonable, so that became the new plan.

(Unfortunately, the new plan would add an extra day to our trip.  Since I had some things planned at home for Saturday, the day I thought we would be home, I would need to get picked up Saturday morning from Pt. Mugu instead of riding the last day into LA.  I contemplated putting off the obligations I had on Saturday, but knew it just couldn't be done.  Dal was also in a bind.  He was planning to go camping with his wife and a group from their church the weekend we were planning to arrive at home.  Since we would no longer get back by Friday evening, as we'd first planned, he was going to get picked up in Santa Barbara by his wife on Thursday.  More on that later).

Dal suggested we get an early start in the morning.  Sounds like a simple suggestion, right?  Well, most mornings we were up by 7am.  However, by the time we got dressed, made & ate breakfast, cleaned up after breakfast, loaded bikes, etc... we would get rolling around 8:45-9:00am.  Dal suggested that we get up a little earlier, pack our things, and eat breakfast in Gorda.  He won us over to his plan by saying he'd buy everyone breakfast at the restaurant!

His plan worked.  We got up around 6:30am, packed our things, and got out on the road about an hour later.  Before long we were parking our bikes outside the restaurant and ordering eggs, pancakes, and other stuff.  (By the way, the water in Gorda isn't potable either.  Do you think it is just a conspiracy to make you buy it for $5/gallon?)

We burned off the pancakes by riding through the rest of the Big Sur.  We took a little break mid-morning to use the restroom and get a couple of snacks at the Ragged Point Inn.  Notice in the photo below that Dal is enjoying a Diet Coke - his favorite form of hydration!  We knew that every time he walked into a convenience store, grocery store, campground store, or restaurant he'd come out with a smile on his face and a cold, caffeinated, carbonated beverage in his hand.





Now that we had completed the Big Sur portion of the coast, the next stretch was relatively flat.  We also had a great tail wind.  It was a nice change of pace.  We stopped to see the elephant seals a few miles north of San Simeon.  We also saw a zebra hanging out with a heard of cattle.
 

 

The elephant seals like to worm their way up on shore and flip sand on themselves as they sunbathe.  Their deep barks and occassional sparring had us mesmerized.

We soon road into San Simeon Village in hopes of buying groceries for lunch and dinner.  The convenience store did not have a very wide selection.  After assessing what the place had to offer, we discussed our options.  Soon we were outside putting together a wild culinary concoction.  Dal combined an onion, a jar of salsa, a can of refried beans, and a can of enchilada sauce in a pot and warmed it over one of the pocket rockets.  Soon we were dipping tortilla chips into it.  Rob sliced some cheese (the boys prefer to say he "cut the cheese") to put with the newly formed sauce on soft shell tortillas.  

It has been long hypothesized that food tastes better when you are camping.  Some people speculate that it has something to do with eating out doors, others suggest that it is caused by extaordinary hunger.  Whatever the case may be, it seems to be true.  We honestly enjoyed Dal's recipe and finished every last bite.  After finishing lunch we picked up a number of items to take with us to the campground for making dinner.  We decided to keep it simple and go with some canned spaghetti and meatballs and cheese and crackers.

We only had to ride a couple more miles before arriving at the San Simeon State Park where we would be camping for the night.  Little did we know we were in for a little suprise.  As we turned left toward the campground a car followed us into the entrance and pulled along side of us.  We were amazed to see that we recognized the two people in the car!  

John, the boys' 7th grade science teacher, and Kelly, his wife, were traveling up the coast on a vacation of their own.  He knew that we were going to be taking the trip from San Fancisco to LA, but never considered the fact that they might see us along the way.  As the two of them were driving north, he spotted our group of six bikes.  There is nothing unusual about that in itself.  Seeing three boys in the group was what caught his eye.  He decided to make a U-turn and check us out.  How cool is that!?!

Soon they were back on the road and we were making our way to a campsite in the campground.  It was nice to arrive in the early afternoon so that the boys had time to explore the beach and goof around a bit.  I enjoyed a little time to make notes about our trip and just relax a little.  We also had the pleasure of hearing stories from a fellow hiker/biker.  For both his sake and yours, I will spare you the details.  Our nickname for him was Compression Shorts - and let's just leave it at that.

After relaxing for a few hours we took advantage of the showers, had dinner, and got ready for bed.  Not only had we enjoyed a short day of biking, we were looking forward to a similar one in the morning.  Ahhhhhhhh....          Zzzzzzzz......

   

Bike Touring Day 3: Monterey to Plaskett Creek

When planning the trip, we knew that Day 3 was going to have a lot of climbing.  The 65 miles for the day would cover much of the Big Sur coastline.  Besides hills, we were looking forward to impressive views of the coast.  Big Sur delivered both.

We had more of a climb heading out of the campground, but soon enjoyed a fun down hill stretch toward Carmel.  I'm not sure I have ever seen a sign for a wild boar crossing before.  We were starting to wonder if we'd been transported to Arkansas over night.

Curves ahead: FOR THE NEXT 74 MILES! 

Once again the weather was mild with cloudy skies.  While climbing, you work up a sweat.  While coasting, you get the chills.  After riding the hills for 30 miles, we took a lunch break at one of the small service areas along highway 1.  The prices were as steep as the hills and the line for the men's room was 6 to 8 people long!  On the other hand, the sun came out!  It gave us an opportunity to dry out a few things.

 

One of the fun parts of the trip was meeting people along the way who are interested in where you are coming from and where you are headed.  Thankfully most of the drivers are courteous about sharing the road with cyclists.  There is not a bike lane or much of a shoulder on the coastal highway through the Big Sur area, so you have to take up part of the right hand lane.  About 6 drivers honked at us that day, but a vast majority of cars were patient and waited for good places to pass when necessary. 

The views were beautiful and helped motivate us when the climbs presented a challenge.  At about 6pm we pedaled into the Plaskett Creek Campground - our stay for the night.  Upon arrival, we found out that the water was not potable.  We had some water, but not enough.  We needed to make an important decision.  Should we boil water in order to have what we needed or go to the next town and buy more?  Gorda, the next town, was several miles away (up hill).

Dal decided to talk to the campground host.  I wasn't sure what his plan was, but I knew that he was less than happy about the situation.  He came back to report that the host was willing to drive to Gorda to pick up several gallons of water for us (for a fee of course), but at least we wouldn't have to make the trip ourselves.

One of the interesting things about bike touring is meeting other cyclists.  The hiker/biker campsites are a good place to meet them, and Plaskett Creek was no exception.  Two riders that we met were Grant and Larry.  They were from San Diego, and riding several days from Big Sur to Santa Barbara.  They were both seasoned riders, so it was fun to hear about their experiences, especially Grant's stories about riding from Alaska to Seattle. 

After a dinner of pasta, sauce, carrots, and bread we enjoyed some water and went to bed.  Oh, by the way, did I mention that due to a water shortage, the bathrooms were out of service?  Well, they were.  That meant we got to use a couple of fancy (NOT) port-o-potties.