We left Lompoc a bit later then we had planned since Adam was trying to update the blog but I had a wonderful time at Starbucks reading the paper and sipping my coffee. There sure is a lot to be said for some relaxation in the morning on occasion.
We managed to find the bike path in Lompoc and follow it to the far end of town. They had warning signs for both rattlesnakes and mountain lions, although we saw neither. We headed up what we knew would be our longest climb of the day first thing. This is the last big climb before San Diego so we were quite excited to reach the top!
The weather remains cloudy and dry and we made great progress back to the coastline. When we got to the intersection oh Highway 1 and 101, we decided to search for the hot springs mentioned in our book as a lunch stop. We met two nice local women in the parking lot of the frontage road who gave us directions to the springs. We started cycling up towards them but soon had to get off our bikes and push. Our guidebook hadn’t mention the trail incline! We did eventually find the hot springs, which were a bit lukewarm but in a beautiful spot, complete with a palm tree.
We enjoyed our lunch and got bitten by these little tiny bugs (well…mostly Adam did). The ride back down the trail was much quicker…but hard on the braking muscles. A 100 pound bike has a lot of momentum going downhill.
The rest of the ride was okay, but definitely reminded us how much we dislike freeway riding. We went through some tight turns on the highway and came out on the coast. From there, it was clear to the campground…except for one bridge without a shoulder….very exciting at freeway speeds.
The campground had one of the most beautiful sites we have stayed at yet. We were right on the water on a sand covered…palm lined beach. A quick dinner and walk on the beach and we headed to bed. Little did we know what the raccoons had planned…
Same day post from Adam (we accidentally wrote up the same day… hopefully there are no discrepancies! 🙂
We felt well rested when we hit the road at 10:30AM. We did some much needed updates to our blog which took a few hours in the morning. We knew we had a short day today so we weren’t in much of a rush to leave this morning.
While trying to leaving Lompoc, we accidentally found the town’s bike path as we tried to avoid their busy shoulderless main road. The first thing that we noticed was a warning sign about Mountain Lions, and another sign right below it about Rattlesnakes. Although highly unlikely that we would see either of them, it was pretty neat to know that they are out there in the surrounding area. The second thing that we found neat was a big roundabout intersection.. for bike paths! It was the first one we have come across on our entire trip!
We had a couple choices for our route for the next two days. One went through a quaint little Danish town and through some quiet back cycling road with minimal shoulders and including a 2400ft climb. The other route was highway 1 with a big shoulder, a 1000ft climb, and a shorter distance to our destination. In the end we decided to high tail it with highway 1 as we were not too keen on a 2400ft climb, or roads with minimal shoulder, or even the potential of back roads being closed.
Highway 1 ended up having only a small amount of traffic, and the wide shoulder made it a descent route. For lunch we decided to stop at a hot spring in a state park. Our guide book had a brief mention of it, and we thought it would be cool to check it out.
We met a couple people at the trailhead who gave us a rough idea of where we had to go up the trail to get to the hot springs. Apparently some people had broken the sign to the turn off to the hot springs so it was good to get a heads up from the people we met.
We decided to take our bikes up there rather then leaving them at the parking lot. It turned out to be quite a climb with our bikes, but we eventually made it there. It was tough, but we have been through so many tough situations it was just another climb to us.
The hot springs were out in the woods and very natural, hence it was not set up to exactly soak yourself in. We just dipped our feet in them and had lunch in the neat surrounding. The water was warm, but not nearly as hot as the water at the Avila Hot Springs. It was really neat to see water just bubbling out of the ground. Later on a couple guys showed up with a couple small dogs. The dogs promptly swam in the hot springs, so we were glad we didn’t decide to go in!
After lunch we went back down the trail with our bikes to the road. We got on the combined highway of 1 and 101 which was on the busy side. We saw a tunnel for the Northbound traffic as per our guidebook and were glad we didn’t have to deal with it on the southbound side through the narrow valley.
After getting through the valley we arrived back on the coast. We had some freeway riding still but the shoulder was nice and wide. I then saw a sign with a bike symbol and the words “Share the Road”, and I thought to myself, “With so much room on the shoulder, why the sign?”. Next thing we knew, there was a short bridge with zero shoulder. No shoulder what-so-ever on the freeway. Our guidebook had warned us about it, but it was still a little shocking. We didn’t have much time to ponder, so we waited for an opening in traffic and booked it through as quickly as we could. A part of the excitement of touring cycling we can easily do without!
When we finally arrived at the Refugio State Beach Campground, we were pleasantly surprised with how nice the campground was. After self-registering using a touch screen machine (the first for our entire trip – mind you, the hiker/biker rate also had doubled) we descended down into the cove from the highway. Like most campgrounds on our trip since Northern Ontario, this one was also fairly empty.
We met the campground hosts to ask about where the hiker/biker site was. It turned out one of the host was also Canadian and there were some jokes thrown around with the American host about Canadians. 🙂 The host said the hiker biker site was the best in the State, and upon arriving at them we couldn’t agree more. It would be a tough place for first between Refugio and Kirk Creek for the best hiker biker sites.
The hiker biker site was right by the beach, under palms trees with a great view of the ocean. There were two RVs parked on the road right in front of the hiker biker site, obstructing much of the view, but they eventually moved out of the way after we had set up camp and had dinner, and went back to their own respective sites.
Despite it being cloudy, we had a nice sunset with the setting of the sun turning the sky a beautiful pink colour.
Trip Around The World 
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