Waking up to the sound of waves crashing on a beach is one of those things you wish happened every day, and today it did. There were two more cyclists on the site, they were off to Mexico cycling down to La Paz, we will follow their blog and see how they do.

A short steep climb up to the freeway then once on it we wizzed along to Gaviota State Beach. At this point we were very happy that we chose to stay at Refugio as the northbound junction was completely shut (as in not there at all) and we would have gone up an extra junction then down again to get to the campground here, a long detour.

A nice touch was the beware cyclist sign you activate before going through the tunnel (and it is needed on the freeway as well) it may make one or two drivers think.

We were soon off the freeway and climbing up to 1000 ft over 2.5 miles, a very constant 7% gradient, the road was good and we found it “easy” for a hill (big shocking statement there).

Then came a nice 16 miles of generally downhill riding, just what was wanted and as an added bonus there was a tailwind (very unusual this time of year). There are increasing amounts of tree and that green stuff called grass growing without irrigation.

All of a sudden I said look at that plane, but no, was it a bird? was it that plane? or something else (I’ll guess something else), it was actually a rocket (Falcon 9 I think) being launced into space from Vandenburg Air Force Base. Our initial though was wow it did not take Trump very long all to push the big red button.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

Then we  were in Lompoc,  this is not a tourist town although they are trying to give people reasons to stop, like a large wine route where there are several places for tasting. We found the town campground and pitched the tent right next to a beautiful field of stocks all different colours with a wonderful fragrance.

The campground is not all that clean, some time spent on litter picking would make a huge difference, and someone looking after the toilets and shower area as well. There was however a park next door and better still an icecream seller, so seconds later we had 2 icecreams, always good at the end of the day.
Then we trekked into town and after a lot of looking around found a restaurant and grocery store (and two tatoo shops), where we had a nice but expensive meal and a quick shop (but skipped having a tatoo).

Back at the site a little bike maintenance is in order, I turned the front chainring around and now it feels just like new (although it does not make me ride faster) I will not be using aluminium ones when these are replaced, nothing but good old steel.

Two more cyclists showed up here on their way down to San Diego and the Mexican border. We swapped tips on campgrounds to stop at, again we were told no hiker / biker sites at the next one, the second person to tell us this.

A very animated phone call

It was now dark so we settled down, these early nights (dark by 4.30 – 5.00 are difficult when you camp.