May 22, 2023 – San Simeon State Park to Guadalupe
Yesterday we drove from Monterey, CA to San Simeon State Park in order to get around the three Big Sur landslides. I called an Uber to Veteran’s Memorial Park and got to the Monterey airport around 8:15am to pick up what ended up being a Ford Escape. After driving back to camp and loading up our two bikes into the small SUV we drove to San Simeon State Park and parked off Highway 1 near the park to unload everything and reassemble our gear. We rode into the state park and turns out their hiker/biker sites were flooded; but the ranger was nice enough to give us a regular site for the same cost as two hiker/biker ones. We setup our tents right away so they could dry and then I headed back to the car to drive it back to the San Luis Obispo airport about 40 miles away or so. I stopped by the grocery store to pick up dinner, dropped the rental off, and then called an Uber to drive me back to San Simeon State Park. By the time I got back to camp it was just shy of 5pm. So all in all it was about 9 hours of travel to get around Big Sur. Nonetheless, it was a nice (though unexpected) rest day off of the bikes. I was able to watch a couple of pre-downloaded Mandalorian episodes and listen to an audiobook since we had zero reception. In the evening we met another cyclist from Seattle who had come through Big Sur and made it without getting caught. I figured it would be easy enough to cross the barriers in the evening from what we’ve been hearing, but I wasn’t interested in chancing it. It was good to hear he got through though as another cyclist we had met a couple of days ago (Rich) had left Monterey at the same time we did to give it a shot. Hopefully he makes it too.
We woke up this morning and the tents were absolutely soaked from the fog. We got moving by 8am because we had a 65 mile day today to Guadalupe. Our trusty old guidebook had our stop planned in Oceano, CA just south of Pismo Beach, but tomorrow is a hard day through Lompoc, CA and I wanted to get a head start, so we kept going another 13 miles into Guadalupe. Owen (fellow cyclist) had told me that the fire department here hosted cyclists in their courtyard, so we made the extra push and got here around 4pm. Turns out the spot they let you camp in is a courtyard between what looks like a elementary/middle school, the fire department, the police department, and city hall so they said we had to come back after 5pm (and be out before 7am tomorrow). We went down and had some excellent Mexican food and then went to a laundromat and washed our clothes to burn time. One of the firemen had told us that a homeless guy had slept here for the past two days, but it doesn’t look like he’s planning on camping with us tonight. Oh, and there’s no showers available here. We’re definitely thankful for the spot to stay the night protected from the wind, but after 65 miles of riding a shower would have been great. Instead, we took hobo showers using the bathroom sink they gave us access to for the night. This whole town looks super old and the bathrooms (connected to their city hall) look like they haven’t been renovated since the 1940s. It’s a town full of farm laborers and the people here definitely don’t have a lot of money. But I’ll stay in a town of hard workers any day; they’re not the ones looking to steal any of your stuff or cause you any problems.
In terms of the ride, it was beautiful going through Cambria (as usual) but we didn’t get any pictures because the fog was so thick it felt like we were getting rained on. But by the time we were passing San Luis Obispo we were riding in fairly clear, cloud-covered weather. We stopped there for lunch about 40 miles into the day and rested for about 45 minutes before getting back on our bikes. The good weather continued through Pismo Beach and basically for the rest of the day (cold, but good). About 10 miles out from Guadalupe, Highway 1 South was closed and we had to detour around some farmland with a nasty uphill with no shoulder. Once we made it up it went back to moderate hills though. With about 6 miles to go, I got my first flat of the trip on my trailer tire. I patched it to save time and realized that it had a patch from my first trip 13 years ago — probably should have swapped out that tube before I got going last week.
Anyways, tomorrow we have a 60 mile day planned with some pretty decent ascents to make, but after that it should be relatively flat all the way to the border. I’m going to crash now and will let you know on my next post if either of us has to fight off a hobo tonight… stay tuned.
-Chris
