Jobob's California Coast Adventure
Denise’s post with the link to the touring article on cnn.com (thanks Denise!) has encouraged me to tell you about our plans for a tour down part of the California coast, tentatively slated for late Sept. – early Oct.
Why then? Well, we had taken a car camping trip to Big Sur this past October and decided we had to do this on bikes – the weather was great, traffic was not too bad, and we saw about 6-10 touring cyclists per day, so it seemed like a good time to do it, with kids back in school and life in more of an off-season mode. Plus hopefully at that time of year the weather won't be too cold along the ocean nor too hot during our planned inland jog thru Lompoc and Solvang to Santa Barbara. The downside would be that some facilities and destinations might be closed or have reduced hours by then, but I think the advantages will outweight the disadvantages.
We plan to keep a very un-aggressive schedule. We're aiming to keep it under 50 miles per day, and some days will be even under 40 miles. But I think that would be plenty considering that we’ll be carrying tents, sleeping bags, and some cooking equipment. It’ll give us plenty of time to reach our destination, with sightseeing and snack stops. We’ll probably be eating out more often than not, thankyouverymuch, but we’ll always have fixings for a meal or 2 in case we’re caught short – we likes our Hormel turkey chili in the convenient little cardboard boxes so we’ll probably always have a few boxes of that on hand, and instant oatmeal, stuff like that. It’s not like we’re ever going to be too far away from restaurants and convenience stores though, and we’re not picky eaters.
The route I (I say “I” because I’m doing the map ciphering and web-browsing at this point, it’s what I enjoy doing, but of course Lee will have some input too … ;) ) put together so far had ten overnight stops between our home in Union City (a bit north of San Jose on the east side of the SF Bay) to Santa Barbara.
Day 1, probably a Sunday, will be one of the most strenous. But we're very familiar with the area so I don't think it'll be a problem, we could just take it slow & steady. We’ll head out bright & early from our home over the Dumbarton Bridge and then head west over the SF peninsula to the coast. We’ll probably stop off at first in Woodside or Palo Alto for coffee & a snack ( coffee & snack stops always figure heavily in my route planning :D ) and then trudge up Old La Honda Road, which should be really delightful with loaded bikes. Let’s just assume we will not come anywhere near my best time of 32 minutes :rolleyes: . But the good news is, after that we get to go down the other side of OLH road where it meets up with Rt. 84 for a smooth gradual desent to the coast. But before we reach the coast we’ll stop at the San Gregorio General Store for a Red Bull or an ice cream, or both. The we reach Rt. 1 and turn left for a few miles southbound along the coast, and turn inland again when we reach the turnoff for the town of Pescadero. We’ll probably do some wandering and snacking in Pescadero (lots of little shops & bakeries, what’s not to like?), maybe pick up some food for dinner, then head south a few miles on Cloverdale Road to Butano State Park where we’ll set up camp for the night. There isn’t a hiker-biker site there and it’s a popular campsite in the Bay Area, which is why we'll likely start on Sunday so we’ll be more likely to have a good selection of camping spots. Depending on the time of day & our energy level, we’ll either ride back to Pescadero for dinner (a couple of good restaurants there) or fix dinner at the campsite. Estimated mileage will be ~ 50 miles, with about 3500 ft of climbing.
Monday we’ll head down Cloverdale Rd. to Gazos Creek Rd. which takes us back to Rt. 1 a bit south of the Pigeon Point lighthouse. There’s supposedly a restaurant at Gazos Creek & Rt. 1 so we’ll probably have a real breakfast there. Then its down Rt. 1 to Santa Cruz (with maybe a stop at Año Nuevo State Reserve to see the seals, and of course a snack stop midway in Davenport) and camp at one of the campsites south of Santa Cruz, maybe New Brighton, Seacliff, or Sunset State Beaches. Total mileage ~ 35-45 ish, depending on where we camp.
Tuesday we’ll ride to Monterey/Pacific Grove via the nice bike path that parallels Rt. 1 – thanks to AG for introducing that route to us! Hopefully we’ll be able to get a room at Asilomar, which is a wonderful place to stay. Back when I worked at UC Berkeley our department had a yearly retreat there -ah, the good old days. Anyhow, sometimes rooms are available to the general public if they aren’t all booked up by conference/retreat groups. Knock wood. Otherwise, we’ll either find a motel room in Monterey or Pacific Grove or we’ll camp out at Veterans Memorial Park. I haven’t heard great things about Vets Memorial Park (Cindy, did you stay there?) so more than likely we’ll find a motel room if we can’t get into Asilomar; it’ll be midweek so it shouldn’t be difficult to find a reasonable place. Total mileage about 40-50 depending on where we stay, but it's mostly flat.
Wednesday we’ll get back onto Rt. 1 and head to Big Sur. Although the book “Bicycling the Pacfic Coast” by Spring & Kirkendall (4th ed., 2005), which is a great reference book, suggests going directly from Vets Memorial Park to Kirk Creek camground, about 60 miles, we’re going to stop at the halfway point of that route, at Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park. We really like that campground and that area so we wouldn’t miss it. Plus, if we start out from Asilomar or elsewhere in Pacific Grove that would add about another 10 miles to the trip. So there. :p
Thursday we’ll ride just 30 miles again, to Kirk Creek Campground, or an extra five miles to Plaskett Creek campground. It’s another ~ 40 miles from there to the campground at San Simeon State Beach, but from reading Spring & Kirkendall plus others’ accounts on crazyguyonabike.com and elsewhere (plus what we saw from our car driving down Rt. 1 last October), it’s a fairly rugged stretch of road with lots of rollers. Plus if the wind is against us (not likely but could happen I suppose), I’d be toast. I suppose if we start out early enough and the weather gods are with us and we have a nice tailwind and we’re feeling good enough we’ll head onward to San Simeon, but we’ll plan conservatively.
More than likely though on Friday we’ll go the 40 miles from Kirk Creek to San Simeon. It’s a short enough ride that we should have plenty of time to wander around nearby Cambria.
From here on out the plans are a lot more sketchy. Luckily we have many months to work out the rest of this route!
On Saturday we’ll perhaps ride ~ 45 miles towards San Luis Obispo. SLO is on the Amtrak line, so if we decided we had enough we could head from there back home (but, I hope not!). We'll probably take Spring & Kirkendall's route which bypasses SLO to the south. There’s an RV resort at Avila Valley Hot Springs (south of SLO & north of Pismo) which has tent campsites and cabin rentals along with a swimming pool and a hot mineral spring pool – that could be well worth checking out !
On Sunday we would possibly go from Avila Vally to Lompoc, which is about 55 miles, and spend the night outside of Lompoc at the River Park campsite. Much of this leg will involve riding past Vandenberg Air Force base. The route goes pretty far inland and hopefully that time of year it won’t be too hot.
On Monday, we’ll go on to Solvang via Rt. 246. Solvang is only about 20 miles from Lompoc (30 miles if we stay at the Cachuma Lake Recreation Area), but I think it would be too much for us to bypass Lompoc and head directly to Solvang on Sunday, especially if it’s hot out. So, we’ll have a very short ride to Solvang which will give us lots of time to check out the scenery and the bakeries :) And once Lee finds out that Cachuma Lake has yurt retals, he’ll definitely want to stay there – he’s always talking about wanting to stay in a yurt !
On Tuesday we’ll go from Cachuma Lake to Santa Barbara via Highway 154. Spring & Kirkendall mention that a few miles down the road from the lake marks the start of a 4 mile climb up San Marcos Pass, elevation 2200 feet, followed by a rapid 7-mile descent on a narrow twisting road with heavy traffic. Oh joy. The good news is it’s only about a 20 mile trip into Santa Barbara.
We’ll probably stay overnight someplace in Santa Barbara and then box up our bikes for the return trip on Amtrak to San Jose.
Since we plan on taking off a full 2 weeks, we have a fews days left over so we can stay an extra day here & there. Although I’m making it sound like we have a strict schedule, that’s really not the case. I’m just giving each leg a day of the week to make it easier to keep them straight, and to get an idea of where we might be on the weekend, that sort of thing.
I wonder how many times we'll change this before we actually head out? :rolleyes:
I'd really appreciate comments & suggestions from anyone who might be familar with any of the areas we're heading through, or who has actually toured in these areas (hi Cindy :) )
- Jo
