Wild turkeys strolled through our campsite.
A closeup of a large, beautiful bird
Sunset at Morro Rock
From San Simeon I continued down the coast through Cambria and Cayucos to Morro Bay State Park. This was another gold-standard park, well-maintained with showers, a large and quiet biker/hiker section and even a golf course. The showers were in operation, too: At Plaskett Creek campground the toilets worked but the sinks were shut off, and at San Simeon State Park all of the bathrooms were locked and rows of porta-potties brought in, all due to the sever drought and mandatory water restrictions. As the day’s ride to Morro Bay was short at 30 miles or so, I used a laundromat to wash everything, as I have done every few weeks or so; usually I hand-wash a few items as I go along.
Shane with his tent, touring setup and cat trailer. The cat was inside the tent.
I had mentioned meeting Shane, a bicycle tourer traveling with his cat, back somewhere around southwestern Washington. I was surprised to see him again in Morro Bay. It turns out that while he has been traveling up and down the coast for 18 months or so, it’s not his “home on the road” and he was returning to his home town of Grover Beach that day.
A low pass near San Luis Obispo. Check the elevation.
Riding into San Luis Obispo completed the main Pacific Coast part of the journey. I stayed the night at the collective home of ten twenty something’s, one of whom I had met in the food co-op on Orcas Island in the San Juan Islands. With the Monday morning dawn came my 100th day since leaving home, and the first day of the final stage of the trip, the return to New Mexico and home.
And so far this has proven to be quite difficult. I enjoy hitchhiking, especially with a bicycle for speed and efficiency. Add a trailer, though, and it’s a different story. Most vehicles can fit a bike, but few can fit bike, full bags and a trailer – it takes a pickup truck or similar and a driver willing to take the time to load and unload. By mid afternoon I had made only about 50 miles, and was on a lonely two-lane highway headed east. Most of the sparse traffic was semi trucks, who don’t stop for hitch hikers, even obviously friendly and interesting ones. I eventually just began riding, as that would for sure get me to my destination eventually. Climbing a long hill at sunset, I made camp near a hidden pond and trees, completely private with not a light in any direction, yet with the distant sound of the trucks climbing the grade all through the night.
Maria
I slept well, and was treated to a 15-mile downhill with a strong tailwind, a cyclist’s rare delight. I stopped to remove a jacket and casually stuck out my thumb. The car stopped, and I ended up with a ride into Bakersfield with Maria, a 50 year old saintly Mexican grandmother with an abiding faith in her God and a desire to help anyone as she could.
From Bakersfield I found my way to the far eastern outskirts of town, setting up my rig and thumb on the highway heading out across the desert. After two hours with no luck and little prospect of a ride, a California Highway Patrol officer stopped. He asked for my ID, assured me that hitchhiking is illegal in the entire state (I thought it to be so only on freeways) and pulled out his ticket book. Once he learned that I was functional, friendly, and not looking for trouble he softened and tried to help but had no ideas. I clearly was not going to follow my original plan, though.
I rode back the six miles or so into downtown Bakersfield, stopping first at the Amtrak station (buses only headed south to catch the Southwest Chief east out of LA; the next one leaving at 2 pm tomorrow). The difficulty with the train is that both bike and trailer must be boxed up and checked, and that’s very hard to do when the bike itself is my transportation. I then rode to the bus station, where a bus was just then loading for points east, to end in Las Vegas. The driver looked over my load and figured that yes, it would fit in the luggage bins beneath. So I quickly bought a $31 one-way ticket with senior discount to Barstow, out in the Mojave desert.