It was nice to be able to enjoy a part day in Refugio State Park sitting in the shade of the palm trees and watching the waves crash on the shoreline. We were joined by Bill (from Colorado) who we last saw when we camped in the torrential downpour in Plasket Creek campground a few days back. We were also joined by a biker from Germany and one from California.
We were on the road by 8:00. We were again the first to break camp. For the first 20 kilometers we enjoyed an easy ride along the shoulder of the expressway Highway 101. It is, however, not blessed with opportunities to observe and enjoy what is around you as you are bombarded by cars flying by at 55 miles per hour or more.
We were forced off of Highway 101 as we entered Goleta. Bicycles and pedestrians are not allowed to be on the expressway through urban areas. The ACA route looked like a good one. Boy were we mistaken! It took us to a bike path that led through the University of California Santa Barbara Campus. We were actually looking forward to some nice bike paths. Boy were we in for a surprise. The ACA map's instruction read as follows. "Turn left onto bike path and follow it across campus". It should have added that you needed to be psychic to know which bike path to follow across campus as there must have been 25 branches to this bike path. The only reason we negotiated our way through the 'maze' of bike lanes was because Sue got a cycle path map from the information place on campus. ACA's next instruction was "as you leave campus turn left and cross Goleta Slough". There were no signs for this...being psychic might have helped again. We turned left onto a bike path that promptly took us back up to the road we had turned off of to get to the bike path to go through campus. We had ridden 6 kilometers and had by now only managed to circle an airport. ACA by this time was getting a failing grade from us...and we were only just getting to the big urban area of Santa Barbara. With a little bit of 'hair pulling' and a whole lot of 'foul language', we were able to navigate ourselves to Carpenteria Beach State Park in Carpenteria. It has an incredible beach. We are again in the Hiker/Biker site and are again camping with Bill (Colorado). There are also 2 British cyclists here. They are quite the story. They have ridden the Pacific Coast Route on fixed gear bikes just like I had as a kid. How in the heck you could climb the hills on the coast without being able to shift your bike down is impossible for us to comprehend.
Trip Distance = 64.01 km. Time on the Bikes = 4 hours 8 minutes. Average Speed = 15.49 km. Maximum Speed = 42.83 km. Wildlife Sightings = Red Tailed Hawk, Heerman's Gull, Western Gull, Western Grebe, Coots, Scrub Jay, Ground Squirrel, Great Blue Heron, Snowy Egret, Great Blue Heron, Great Egret.
A good bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon has turned our day around. And to plagiarize again...life is good!
Santa Barbara
Great Blue Heron Fishing For Ground Squirrels On Our Campsite
Sunset Over Carpenteria Beach
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