California Coast

View near the lighthouse on Point Reyes

View of the Salinas Valley from our campsite

Us in Big Sur after spotting several California Condors

Kristen on her bike near Santa Barbara

After leaving Sacramento, we needed to get to the Las Vegas airport to catch our flights to North Carolina.  You can theoretically do the drive in 8-10 hours on the freeway, but we decided we wanted to do it right – drive the 1 down the coast.

The trip took 6 days:

Day 1: picked up our friend Matt in Berkeley and spent the day at Point Reyes (north of SF), then got Mexican food in the Mission and crashed on Matt’s couch.

Day 2: drove the coast down through Santa Cruz to do some mountain biking.  We ended up trying out (and subsequently buying) some 5.10 shoes and platform pedals.  For the past month, we’ve been hearing about how great platform pedals are for mountain biking and were curious.  We tried them out on a pretty flat trail on the bluffs overlooking the ocean.  They were awfully weird after using clipless shoes for so long, but we decided they were worth keeping.  We spent the rest of the afternoon in Santa Cruz, checking out the pier and the coast.  That night, we camped on the top of a hill at the Laguna Seca Raceway, with beautiful views of the mountains around Salinas and Monterey.

Day 3: had breakfast in Salinas and visited John Steinbeck’s childhood home.  We’re huge Steinbeck fans (especially after reading East of Eden, easily my favorite book of all time).  Then we went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium (even better than we both remembered), did the 17 Mile Drive through Pebble Beach and had a picnic on the grounds.  That evening, we drove down to a packed state park in Big Sur to cook some dinner and camp for the night.

Day 4: had breakfast at a roadside inn, and then did 2 hikes in Big Sur.  The first went up the coast range on a restricted dirt road, with views of the ocean.  After about 30-45 minutes, we decided the views were pretty but not worthy of Big Sur (Kristen: “this view sucks.”  Me: “we can see the ocean and mountains!”  Kristen: “this is BIG SUR, one of the most beautiful places in the world.  If I can’t even see the coastline, this hike is lame.  Let’s go to the bluffs.”  And she was right.  We hiked for a number of miles along the costal bluffs, and didn’t ever want to leave.  But duty called, and we drove down to Pismo Beach, set up camp just off the shore, got some tacos in town, and watched the sunset from the pier.

Day 5: drove down to Santa Barbara for some mountain biking just over the range above the city.  This was our first real ride with platform pedals, and results were mixed.  We had some difficulty at first getting our feet in the right place, but (at least for me), they proved their worth around the many sandy corners on the trail, as I often had to put my inside foot down to avoid slipping out.  Kristen had some solid issues with the sand as well, washing her front wheel out 4-5 times.  We’d been kicking the can down the road on buying her a new set of tires (she still had the set that came with the bike on there), so it looked like it was finally time to get her some extra grip.  The trail was super fun, though, with a 45 minute climb up, and miles of rolling singletrack on the way back down.  Afterward, we cleaned up and met Kristen’s friend Vicky for dinner in Santa Monica, then crashed on her floor.

Day 6: had breakfast with Kristen’s friend Gwen in Pasadena, then drove up to Las Vegas.  The temperature gauge in the car read a max of 110 degrees, our highest yet!  Since we would be leaving Vegas that night for a week, we needed to find somewhere to store our car and bikes.  Parking costs $30+ per day at the casinos, and we were nervous about security at other cheaper lots.  So, we dropped the bikes off for a tune-up at a local bike shop, then took the car in for some warranty maintenance and an oil change at the local Ford dealer, telling both we’d be back in a week to pick them up!