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San Simeon to Santa Barbara, eight days - 211 miles

Getting There

Day One, a tour of Hearst Castle - 0 miles

Day Two, San Simeon to Morro Bay - 32.4 miles

Day Three, Morro Bay to San Luis Obispo -  18.5 miles

Day Four, San Luis Obispo to Pismo Beach - 16 miles (0 by bike)

Day Five, Pismo Beach to Lompoc - 56 miles

Day Six, Lompoc to Solvang - 24.2 miles

Day Seven, Solvang to Santa Barbara - 48.6 miles

Day Eight, Last Day - 6.6 miles

Getting There

    We left on a Friday night, and as is usual, didn't get the early start we wanted. Lodi to San Simeon is a five hour drive. By the time we reached Carmel it was dark. We drove in the dark from Carmel to San Simeon. I kept looking at the coast road, two narrow lanes that twisted and turned up and down like a snake on a hot griddle. I thought, "I'm not going to ride along this road, I don't care if it is the Pacific Cycling Trail." However, about ten miles north of San Simeon, we crossed into San Luis Obispo County. The road straightened and the shoulder widened to over ten feet. I became much less apprehensive about the ride. We reached our motel past midnight. The key to the room was taped to the side door. We checked ourselves in and crashed in the queen sized bed.

Day One, a tour of Hearst Castle - 0 miles

    We laid around in bed for a while before getting up and then went down to the desk to check in. The clerk arranged a tour time of 1:20 in the afternoon for our tour of Hearst Castle so we decided to visit Cambria, a small town six miles down the coast to pass the morning hours away. The drive to Cambria was short but gave us a chance to see what conditions we'd be riding in on the next day. The wide shoulder was encouraging as well as the gradual incline and fall of the highway.

    After tromping through three boutique stores it was time for our tour of San Simeon. The hour and a half tour took us through some of the grounds around the open pool close to the main house, through one of the guest houses, portions of the ground floor of the main house and the indoor pool. While the view of the valley and ocean was impressive, as was the architecture, the decorations of the house are an eclectic collection of what appears to be in many cases, European cast offs. Some of the interior appointments like using choir seats for wainscoting in the castle's main rooms made me scratch my head as to Hearst's choices given his obvious fascination with the art and wealth of old Europe. With his wealth, it seems that he would have been more successful in recreating the feeling of European wealth and culture rather than buying what amounted to European junk.

    The tour over, we drove back to Cambria for dinner and walked around the town for a short time more before heading back to the hotel, ready for the next day's ride.

Day Two, San Simeon to Morro Bay - 32.4 miles

Route: Easy riding - South on Hwy 1 from San Simeon Village to Ocean Avenue, Cayucos, Right on Ocean Avenue through town. Return to Hwy 1 upon exiting Cayucos. Hwy 1 to Morro Bay. Exit Hwy 1 right to Main Street.

    The TV weatherman had predicted rain for Sunday, our first day of riding and we could hear the rain on and off all through the night. When I looked out in the morning, everything was wet and I could see raindrop rings in the standing puddles. By the time we checked out and locked all of the extra gear in our van, the rain had stopped. We fastened our panniers on the tandem and parked the van in an unused part of the lot and headed south along the shoulder of Hwy. 1. We missed the entrance to Moonstone Beach Road, a road that paralleled Hwy. 1 for a short way just before Cambria and kept on the highway. Once at Cambria we turned off the highway and looked for a place for breakfast. 

    We saw two touring bikes parked outside a breakfast cafe and met two riders coming out as we pulled up. The middle aged couple was from Canada and had been riding for five weeks, starting at Vancouver. They were on their way to Mexico, doing the "Three Flags" trip. They said that the ride had been great from Canada to Monterey but then the coastline had become a tortuous trail of uphills and downhills along a desolate roadway that was wearing. I silently agreed with them from what I had seen on the drive two nights before. They had camped in a campground just south of our motel the previous night but said they were warm and dry in their tent. They were in a hurry to be on their way since their day's target was Pismo Beach, a ride of about 60 miles.

    We said goodbye and went in for breakfast, spending a half hour watching the weather improve. The Adventure Cycling map showed a route through town but we decided to go back onto the highway since we had driven the route the day before and there was a considerable hill to climb if we followed the map. Back on the bike, the riding was easy with just a few hills to make us break out into a sweat now and again. Spanish Moss hung on the trees in the shaded areas of the roadway and reminded us of trees we had seen in North Carolina in our tour of the Outer banks. As we looked south through the mist of the overcast day, we could see the big rock that marked Morro Bay in the distance. 

    In a little over an hour we found ourselves turning off Hwy. 1 onto Main Street in Cayucos. As we rode through town we saw the Canadian couple's bikes outside a coffee house and decided to stop to chat for a few more minutes. They were just finishing as we walked in and we talked a little more of touring as they readied their bikes for riding. They still had many miles to go and our ride for the day would be ending in a short more six. I took a picture of them just before they rode off.

    The ride from Cayucos to Morro Bay took about half an hour. We turned off on Main Street and quickly found our hotel for the night within three blocks of the highway. We were early for check-in but the clerk found a room that had already been cleaned and changed our registration. She told us that the waterfront was only two blocks away and the road to the rock the same distance. We dumped our gear and rode down to the waterfront for lunch and then rode from restaurant to restaurant, looking at all the menus, trying to decide where we'd eat dinner. We didn't see anything that really grabbed us and decided to stop searching for a while and head for the rock.

    We played around on the rubble at the bottom of the rock and watched the shore birds for a while and then headed back towards the waterfront. On the way, we stopped to buy some salt water taffy and checked out one more menu. This time I found what I had been looking for, seafood pasta in an Alfredo sauce. We marked the restaurant, "The Dockside" as the place where we'd eat that night.

    We rode on looking for a liquor store and spied a sign advertising the Morro Bay Wine Seller just as it started raining. We went into the rabbit warren of shops and worked our way to the rear where the wine seller had a counter set up. He advertised six tastes for $5. We took him up on the offer and the six tastes extended on to eight and then nine and then ten. We picked out a bottle to split, half before dinner and half after and returned to our bike just as the rain had stopped. A quick two blocks and we were back at our hotel, the Ascot Inn.

    After a shower and sipping half the bottle, it was time for dinner. We rode the stripped tandem back to the Dockside and were seated by the hostess, Bonnie Tognazzini, who was also the owner. We found that the restaurant we had chosen was a family affair. Bonnie ran the restaurant and her husband, Mark, did the fishing on his boat, the "Bonnie Marietta". His father, once a principal in Morro Bay, wandered from table to table, talking to the guests, something we found lots in common with since my wife is a vice-principal and I'm a high school teacher. Both our dinners were truly outstanding and we left with smiles on our faces. Once back at the hotel room we finished the bottle of wine we had purchased and felt supremely content, the perfect end to a perfect touring day.

Recommended:

Tognazzini's Dockside Restaurant
Embarcadero Blvd,
Morro Bay CA 93442
805 772-8100
Seafood dinners from $10 to $20 dollars. Very, very good food and a nice family atmosphere.

Day Three, Morro Bay to San Luis Obispo -  18.5 miles