A sunny very warm morning greeted us in the morning. I had a good nights sleep. We availed ourselves of the 'free' breakfast followed by a nice walk down to the shops to see what time they opened. I was still on the hunt for pressies.
Too bad they opened at ten. Oh well, this was one big spender they weren't going to get money out of then. Their loss.
It was real hot (28C on my cheap little coffee guage I had cable tied to the bars), so we geared down to make the ride down the coast.
We wanted to follow the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH 1) all the way to Los Angeles. Surely we can't go wrong on this road. Even idiots can get this one right!
What a beautiful ride. We were just humming along taking in the vistas and stopping where we could to take pictures. It was a Saturday morning so everyone was just driving along in a fairly chilled out frame of mind, mind you were back in California so maybe that had something to do with it?
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| Northern Californian coastline Highway 1 |
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| Ditto |
In this fog the temperature drops dramatically and all of sudden our summer riding gear was looking, (and feeling) a bit inadequate.
At one photo opp stop I put my lining back in. We stopped at this really trendy cafe place along the coast for a bite to eat and some proper coffee. Very expensive artwork for sale but they had a nice cafe attached so we just walked though the shop. This was the one and only place on our trip so far where we were not able to use the WIFI, this was for use for 'Corporate' only? I'm not quite sure who corporate were? There was no one else there? Perhaps it was becasuse we didn't buy anything from the shop - Hah..
Mind you, one item I was looking at had a $2,500 pricetag, and I was told they can ship. Hah, I don't think so, what would the chances be of that arriving in one piece? I did however like the bird boxes there were selling.
We continued to enjoy our run down the coast just putting up with the patches of fog, but there were getting more frequent the further south we got. There were some very nice places along the way, some resorty type places and others looked like private home. VERY impressive private homes!
No.1 Highway remains number 1 and sometimes 101, but is known by other names along the coast. At San Simeon it is called Cabrillo Hwy and it was here that came across a quite a few cars stopped with all the people looking at something, so being the nosy buggers that we are we wanted to stop and see what everyone else was looking at? They were looking at elephant seals. Just in their natural enviroment, lounging around in the sun and the sand. So close the road and feeling no fear. They were fun to watch, there was a big-ish water hole fed by storm water that they loved swimming in and playing games with each other. We found out a bit further down the road that this was a small site to see the seals. The beach we came across later had thousands of them all packed tightly on the beach with lots of people calling in each year to see them.
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| A not very good photo of the Elephant seals at San Simeon - sorry! |
We still had some distance to go. We enjoyed our coffee anyway and busy central city area. Lots of people around shopping and parents with their kids, (sorry young adults). This is a university city so with spring break being over I suspect parents were dropping their offspring back to their lodgings.
Back on the bikes and time to wake these people up. I'm getting quite used to being stared at now.
Santa Maria was our destination for the night and was only 29 miles away so my geographical error wasn't as bad as first thought. We zoomed down these distances and having already decided where we were going to stay Mr GPS directed us safely to our destination through a very different type of town. One woman I had been talking to earlier asked us why were going to Santa Maria? Who goes there she said? Santa Barbara was much nicer.
Anyway, we decided as we were living life on the edge that Santa Maria was it for us for the night. We stayed at the Best Western and it was nice.
I was talking to a nice guy (Roger) and his wife (Wendy). He was a retired cop from San Francisco and they now owned a range in Oregon. They were on their Harleys on their way to Florida to visit his daughter. Man, what a ride that was. It was fun talking to them, he had some tales to tell about his time in the Police Dept. He had bought his wife a .38 gun in an auction for $300. So she could be safe. She had it with her. He had one too of course. The gun culture here fascinated me, and they could clearly not understand how 'unprotected' New Zealanders must be. He could not get his head around a Police force that only had stab-vests, pepper spray and stun guns! They had 'ranch sitters' in while they were on the road. It was good to see people that actually used their bikes, they had done some big miles on them over the years. We chatted for quite a while in the dying day.
Nev had freshened up by now and joined us for a while.
We went for walk down the road looking for the local bowling alley where we had been told we could have a beet. We couldn't even find that? Some interesting cars went past with lowered suspension, loud noise, (where was my bad-boy bike when I needed it?), and some interesting charactors in them. I didnt feel quite as safe here as I have all the way around. I hoped the camo draggin jeans would make people think I was military and leave us alone. Of course that could also have made us a target! Oops....
We settled for a Subway in the end for a 6" meatball, well I did. Nev had the chicken one. Guess what? It WAS exactly the same as the NZ version of the sandwich! We did our usual trick of buying some cheap beer from a 24/7 and took it back to the hotel for consumption. Ahh, that was nice!
We watched The Hangover Las Vegas on the movie channel and I caught up with blog. Then it was time to tuck myself up with my helmet and dream of chasing squirrels on my Harley!
Nighty nite, sleep tight!
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