Three great nights sleep in a row in a very comfortable condo in Santa Monica, so it was a struggle to get out of bed knowing tonight would almost certainly be sleeping in a tent. Most of our packing was already done, so after a breakfast consisting of the last of our granola crumbs, a few crushed biscuits and yoghurt we were close to hitting the road. After a quick tidy of the condo, we pushed our bikes out of the complex and onto the road outside.
The first part of the route was a familiar one as we decided to start at the Route 66 end marker post. The morning traffic was quite heavy, but with bike lanes all to ourselves, we were back standing on the pier in no time.
From the pier, we joined the morning runners and rollerbladers, following a path that cut through the beach until we reached the outskirts of Santa Monica. Once we ran out of beach path we had no alternative other than to join Highway 1, which by now was very busy with fast-moving traffic. This was by far the scariest road we had cycled on since leaving Chicago, with a very narrow hard shoulder and drivers giving us 3 inches rather than 3 ft of clearance as they thundered past.
We continued pushing on through Malibu, which was very pretty but nothing to stop for. That said, before and after Malibu plenty of RV owners had found a reason to stop. With most of the RVs looking old and battered, many of them looking like they had been there for a long time, we can only guess that most of these RV owners were making the most of the free parking and stay there permanently.
We eventually pulled off Highway 1 and into Port Hueneme, giving us the first opportunity of the day to find a spot off the road to grab a bite to eat. With a large naval base next door we found ourselves sitting at a table eating the cheese wraps, we had prepared earlier, in Missile Park, which contained replicas of everything from the appropriately named ‘HARM’ missile through to ‘Polaris’. The missile that I would have liked to have seen, the ‘Sidewinder’, was not on its plinth, so can only guess someone had pressed the wrong button.
After passing through the lovely town of Oxnard, where everyone appears to have a jetty and an accompanying boat at the bottom of their garden, we came to our first campground choice for the night.
The McGrath State Beach Campground was showing up as closed on Google Maps, but ever the optimist we thought we would give it a go, maybe stealth camping if nobody was around. Unfortunately, there were plenty of official-looking people around, including a young female Park Ranger that failed to look sympathetic when we tried to convince her that we were tired and just needed to put the tent up and sleep.
Emma Wood State Beach and Campground was our next hope, a further 10 miles along the coast. While the town of Ventura between us and the state beach does have hotels, they are of the variety that doesn’t have stained bathtubs, serve a doughnut as a continental breakfast and sticky tape to hold the aircon unit on the wall, so way out of our price range.
As we cycled through the beach park of Ventura a couple that was out for an evening stroll asked where we had cycled from. David and Crystal live in Ventura and hearing that we were heading to Emma Wood campground David asked if we would like to stay at their place instead. He offered this out of earshot of Crystal, so I suggested he check out his partners view on the offer first. I may have completely misread the body language, but Crystal didn’t seem as keen as David to have two strangers stay at their home for a night, so I backed out of the offer by saying that the Emma Wood campground would be fine as we had good sleeping bags to keep us warm. As we parted David gave us his card in the event we had any problems, in which case he would come to us with his truck and take us to his home. A very generous gesture bearing in mind we had only met him 3 minutes earlier.
Just before the Emma Wood campground, we came to an RV park. Deborah couldn’t resist the possibility of chopping a couple of miles off the day so popped into reception to ask the price for a wee tent and two smelly cyclists. It would have been expensive at half the price, but at $60 plus taxes, it would have been the most expensive accommodation we had shelled out on since leaving Chicago.
Emma Wood campground was now our only hope, so when we pulled up to the entry kiosk to find a ‘No Camping’ sign we were a little disappointed, to say the least. As there are two parts to the campground, the tent area that we were standing in and the RV area another two miles along the road. Running out of options we headed for the RV area.
We pulled up to the RV area kiosk and was welcomed by Allan, just as the most spectacular sunset was underway in the background. Allan informed us that tents were not allowed in the RV area, but that he would happily take a photo of us with the sunset in the background.
We explained that there was a ‘No Camping’ sign in the tent area, the reason we were now standing in front of him. He said he didn’t have the authority to allow us to camp here, but the Park Ranger was at the other end of the RV area and we could go and ask him.
A mile of cycling later we found Gino, the Park Ranger. Hearing our story Gino gave us the okay to camp anywhere we wanted, then drove off. We followed his rear lights in the direction of the park entry kiosk, only to be stopped halfway there by Audy, a Park Volunteer. Audy had been told by Gino to look after us, so concerned that our wee tent would be squashed by a sleepwalking RV he suggested we put the tent up on a rough patch of dirt in the shadow of his monster RV, although as it was dark at the point the shadow was being cast by the light from his equally monstrous television hanging on the wall of his RV.
We put the tent up in record time and crawled in for an early night. Dinner was a buffet of crisps, trail mix and tortilla wraps, which after a 65-mile day didn’t taste too bad.
Just as we were about to sleep Audy made a coughing noise outside of the tent. Acknowledging him he went on to ask us if we could move our bikes so that he could park his Jeep next to his RV. His Jeep was already parked in a perfectly good parking bay, but I guess old habits die hard and he wanted to move it to where our bikes were.
Reluctantly we crawled out of the tent, moved the bikes, crawled back into the tent, then settled down to sleep. Our first 65 miles of the Pacific Highway from Santa Monica to San Francisco in the bag. It was 7 pm and we were planning for an early start tomorrow morning.
