Everyone knows that the Pacific Coast Highway is a scenic drive, and it can be one teriffic motorcycle road too - if conditions are right. Well, today, we had it all. But I'm getting ahead of myself here...
We arose at a reasonable hour again this morning, packed the bikes, had breakfast at the hotel and tried to get some cheaper gas (less that the $3.75 + close by) before we got on our route. I had found an ARCO station that listed $3.61 a gallon, but when we got to the pumps it turned out that they took ONLY cash, or a debit card which they wanted to add a .35 fee onto. We elected to pass, though later we weren't sure we made the right call... We got onto US-101 headed south for Monterey which would be the start of our PCH segment. We got to Monterey easily enough, but we did have some considerable difficulty locating a place to take photos documenting that we were in Monterey. Usually we would use a city sign, but there were none in a place we could safely stop and get a photo. We drove around in the tightly packed community looking for a place, when we drove by the police station. Even their sign out front wasn't suitable because the part that said "Monterey" was in very small print. We did see a bunch of police cars parked in the lot though so we went in there and used them for our photo op.
Once the documentation photo was complete we got onto Highway 1 and the fun began. First off, the views all along the coast here are stunning. To top that off, the weather can help that, as sit did today with some foggy sections, that from a scenic standpoint added to the visual experience, but from a riding perspective made visibility problematic from time to time. Traffic was pretty light, though we did run up behind cars often enough. In some cases the drivers were very courteous and used one of the copious turnouts to let us by. Others however were sometimes oblivious and we would be "stuck" behind them for some miles before a suitable passing opportunity presented itself. We did run into one such situation - a Toyota Prius which was slowing to a veritable crawl around some of the curves. It didn't help that the driver behind him was not "pressing" him to clue him in that he was holding up a line of over 10 vehicles (before we finally got by him). Eventually, there was a passing zone where we were able to pass him and 4 other cars behind him all in one fell swoop. Um, yeah, I had hit 80+ to get by, but it was that or spend the entire day behind this driver. I have to say too, that many of the California drivers, though somewhat aggressive, were for the most part pretty courteous too. One can tell that this IS the state with a love affair with their vehicles.
When we had the open road it was wonderful twisty motorcycle riding. Except for the fog in placed that limited visibility, and because we were there so early in the day we had to deal with coming in and out of shade to sun that also limited visibility at times. Despite all of that it was still a heck of a lot of fun!
 |
| Note the fog bank offshore |
 |
| Fog covering the ocean |
 |
| Same place, different angle of view |
We finished out the PCH, encountering more traffic as we got closer to Morro Bay. When we got to Morro Bay we got fuel again (for "only" $3.75/gal) and decided to get some lunch. We went right down to the coastline and found a quaint little place, the Blue Skye Diner where we had a nice brunch overlooking Morro Bay.
 |
| View at lunch of Morro Bay |
 |
| The Intrepid Travelers |
From there, I had thought it was going to be just a boring ride up some major roads, but Larry (who did the routing for most of this trip) had some surprises up his sleeve. We got onto CA-41 which took us some 15 miles up through the San Gabriel mountains and OMG - this was actually BETTER than the PCH from a motorcycling perspective because there was virtually NO traffic to contend with and the road was just as twisty! Eventually though it got hotter and hotter as we headed away from the coast. By the time we got out to Atascadero, it had already gone for the mid to upper 60's of the coast, up to the upper 70's. We stopped and shed our liners and off we were again. The temps continued to rise, eventually hitting a high of 98 degrees, which we rode in for a few hours. We drank a lot of fluids, and stopped periodically for breaks and by the time we got to our overnight destination in Sonora CA it was down to a bearable 89! Oh, and we could see the smoke from the "Rim Fire" which caused the closure of our intended route - 120 through Yosemite.
 |
| Smoke from the Rim fire as we approach Sonora, CA |
Stats for today: 414.6 miles in 8:09 moving, 10:16 elapsed time.
Added GPS Track for the day:
No comments:
Post a Comment