Cycle Tour Morro Strand to Santa Maria: From The Beach To The Farm

Day 5 of my 8-day tour would be a long ride through a wide variety of California terrain, but it started with me fixing my kitchen. Quick backstory: I thought my fuel canister was empty after very little use, so I pitched it and bought a new one. I was pretty excited to cook bacon for breakfast, so I set up the stove with a new, full canister. But to my dismay, I still got no flame. Not much could go wrong with my simple little titanium camping stove. After turning it on and off a few times, I blew air through the small tube that goes from the canister to the stove. That fixed it. The canister that I threw away probably still had a lot of fuel left. More on my stove when I review it in a separate blog, but I was able to forgive it, and I still give it a thumbs up.

As I was breaking camp, I met Colette, who was car camping next to me. And by car camping, I mean sleeping in her Honda Civic. She was a wonderful woman with a heavy French accent, even after living in the USA for 45 years. She adventured a lot and often alone.

She shared a great story with me: she had a daughter who never called (nope, I have never heard that one before). One of the few times she did call was while Colette was out adventuring. Colette came home to find police all around her property, investigating the missing persons report her daughter had filed on Colette when she couldn’t reach her mother. Her daughter had panicked and presumed the worst. It only showed how little she knew about how her mother lived. I wasn’t sure whether the story was a comedy or a tragedy, but Colette told it well.

And before I could ask her, Colette said she thought it was silly that women were so afraid of travel and adventuring alone. She had done it all her life and had only one incident where she thought someone was following her, but she wasn’t sure, and nothing came of it.

I finished packing and took some time to explore the beach where I was camping. It was a mix of sandy bluffs, rugged ground cover, and shifting wetlands. It was very photogenic under the morning clouds. I returned to my bike, brushed off the sand, and started my ride on the dedicated bike trails around Morro Bay.

I followed the official Pacific Coast Route. From Morro Bay, it turned inland and became a divided highway. Even the most scenic route can’t avoid some amount of highway riding. The steady uphill grade went on for miles and ended in the beautiful town of San Luis Obispo. I stopped for a coffee in a cute business district.

After SLO, I rode back to the coast, sort of by surprise; I had not looked at my route that much and was not expecting any ocean views. The greater Pismo Beach area is a classic eclectic group of beach towns and the ride through them was fun and easy. The downtown pier area was under construction while I was there. I wound my way through it and across Pismo Creek, which formed a wetland in the middle of town.

Next is a route recommendation for Pacific Coast Route riders. As you leave Pismo Beach and ride through Arroyo Grande, stay on the marked route. A sign points you down Halcyon Road as an alternate route. It cuts a corner off the route and saves you some distance, so it is very tempting. Halcyon looks great at first, but it ends with no shoulder, is very steep, and is very busy. I have taken that cut twice now because of that sign, and I think it is a bad idea.

But I survived Halcyon Road, and the rest of the day was farm country roads. I shared the road with huge farm trucks, slow tractors, and clumps of dirt while negotiating small shoulders and rough pavement. The scenery was classic rural farmland with open fields, storage silos, heavy farming equipment, and the like. It was an abrupt change from the previous days of riding along the coast.

My ride that day ended in Santa Maria. It is the big city in a farming area, so it reminded me of where I grew up. I stopped for supplies and made my way to the hotel where I would be staying that night, the only night I would spend at a hotel during my 8-day tour. I couldn’t believe how happy I was to see it; I was ready for a little extra comfort that night.

When I called ahead to make reservations, the concierge assured me that it was okay to bring my bike right into the hotel and into my room. They said they had a lot of cyclists there riding the coastal route. I could see why: the nearest campground is pretty far away in Lompoc and did not fit my schedule. The Radisson is only a few bucks more than the bargain motels, so I splurged. I was happy I did.

I ate dinner at the nicer restaurant at the hotel with white tablecloths and everything. Such decadence! I would be back to camping and cooking soon enough. Pampering myself for a night was a wonderful change of pace and recharged me for the rest of the ride. I concluded that when I do a multi-week tour someday, I will stay at hotels one or two nights a week.

I cleaned myself and my clothes thoroughly, using the sink and tub to clean my clothes. I hung everything all over the room to dry, feeling confident they would actually get really dry that night after so many nights outside in foggy, damp conditions. I must have been in “roughing it” mode; I never even thought of using the laundry at the hotel. I put all of my electronics on real wall chargers too, another luxury. And as I did on most nights, I fell asleep quickly, early and well, ready to continue my ride into Southern California wine country the next day.