Gorda – Ragged Point (for lunch)
11 Miles
Slow start this morning. I got up, wrote a little, checked
out and then had a short stack and eggs for breakfast in the Whale Watchers
Café. After breakfast I tracked down a geocache located across the street, and
then headed down the road. I stopped almost immediately to pull on some sweat
pants. Cold and overcast today! Today started much like yesterday with a long
climb to the highest point along this stretch of highway from Carmel to San
Simeon Village. Everything was a little sore and tired, but quite functional
and before long I was back in spectacular coastal scenery.
The road seemed narrow and closer to the edge, and there
were fewer guard rails separating me from a several-hundred-foot sheer drop to
the ocean. Lots of butterflies in the stomach as I rode along the narrower
stretches. I often experienced an odd sensation when my right eye would try to look
down and across at the beautiful coastline while my left eye kept fixed to the
road, scanning for traffic and keeping track of that white line at the edge.
After an hour and a half or so I summited one rather steep hill and was treated
to a view that must have been at least 20 miles down the coast. Fantastic! I
also noticed that in the not too far distance the landscape flattened out. It
looked like my ride through the (amazing? Awe-inspiring? Incredible?
Unbelievably Spectacular?) hills was about to come to an end. I felt a pang of
sorrow! I turned back to drink in the incredible view and spent a long moment
just listening to the wind carry the sounds of the surf up the hill. A couple
more turns and I hit the San Luis Obispo county line, and a couple more and I
was taking my last big descent into Ragged Point.
I know there are plenty of amazing things that remain to be
seen, but at the same time I can’t help but feel like I just walked off the
biggest roller coaster in the amusement park, feeling exhilarated but a little
sad that this amazing part of the trip has passed (and of course there’s a part
of me already calculating when I can get back here).
Ragged Point – San Simeon
19 Miles
Back on the road after lunch. I still had a lot of
descending to do and it was rather steep and exhilarating. At the bottom the
terrain became rolling hills, gradually diminishing in size as I went along. I
think I saw Hearst Castle up in the hills to the east. The weather continued to
be cold and overcast.
As I’m riding along I roll past a beach where it looks like
there were hundreds of long, tan and gray blobs all laying around on the beach
accompanied by an awful smell. At first I feared a school of something or other
had beached itself and was slowly decomposing, but as I watched, every few
seconds a flipper would fly up throwing sand all over. As I got closer I saw
that it was seals! Another mile down the road there is an entire area set aside
for watching these elephant seals. Apparently this is their big breeding ground.
I stopped for a few minutes and checked them out. Mostly they were just laying
around doing nothing (exactly what I planned to be doing in a couple more
hours) but there was a little activity. www.elephantseal.org
or https://www.facebook.com/pages/Friends-of-the-Elephant-Seal/133598726694263?ref=ts&fref=ts
if you want more information.
At long last I rolled into San Simeon and found plenty of
affordable lodging on the east side of the highway. Tomorrow…San Luis Obispo!
No comments:
Post a Comment