Breakfast was a breeze this morning with the store being so close. The rest of our milk from last night survived and we were able to use that on the cereal that we bought this morning. The three of us ate at the tables inside the store, which is always a nice change from eating outdoors. There is also free wifi at Safeway, so we were able to utilize that, as well as the bathrooms to rinse out our breakfast bowls. Last night while I was typing away, I fell asleep and woke up with my hands still on the keyboard. So, after we ate, I finished up that blog that was left in mid-sentence. I am one day away from being caught up on blogs now, FINALLY! As we were relaxing, we saw one of the cyclists from the group of three we met yesterday- we knew we would run into them again at some point. We got a little bit of a late start this morning, but at least it was a productive morning for all of us (Loic had to catch up on his journal, too). The ride was a bit hilly today, but the views were amazing yet again as we rode along the ocean. Up and down and back and forth we went as we meandered along the cliffs. There were even a few neat bridges that we went across too. At one point, we came across a section of construction, right in the middle of one of the uphills. The traffic was reduced to a single lane, but it ended up not being too bad because there was a button for cyclists to push to turn the light green. We waited for all of the traffic at the light to go through before we did since we had to climb. The button really worked well because we made it all the way through before the traffic light changed in the other direction. Normally, the light would have changed a lot sooner for the oncoming traffic. We primarily had a tailwind, but since we were meandering back and forth along the cliffs, sometimes it changed to a headwind or side wind. At the the top of one of the cliffs, the wind was really strong, so strong that I didn't have to pedal at all the last 100 feet of the climb. As we got closer to Big Sur, the road started to turn away from the ocean. It took us through some cow pastures and then into the woods. There were a few sections of redwood trees, but they weren't as big as the ones that we saw in Norther CA. The Big Sur area was different because all of the businesses were very spread out. We ended up finding a nice place to have lunch right next to the library in the green grass under a sunny sky. There was even bathrooms right close by at the gas station and running water from the hose. After having some mac and cheese, Joe and I went to do a little computer work and while he waited, Loic took a little nap before doing some computer work of his own. We had a nice long, but productive lunch break. Almost immediately after getting back on the road, we had a pretty long climb, probably a couple miles long. The boys were waiting at the top like always, they seemed to do a lot of that today since we had lots of uphills. Once we were over the top, we could see the ocean again and would ride along it for the remainder of the day. On the way down the hill, we saw one of the cyclists from the group of 3 that we saw earlier. She was riding unloaded in the opposite direction, probably heading into "town" to get something. For the rest of the afternoon, all we did was go up and down. We probably rode for another 15 miles or so before starting to look for a place to camp for the night. On the way, we had a short little stop near one of the state parks. There was a waterfall right near the ocean where the water came off the rocks and disappeared into the sand below. It was so beautiful! After our short little walk, we only rode for another 2-3 miles before finding someplace that would work to camp. It's a little harder to find places on this section of road because for the most part, there is the ocean on one side and a big steep hill on the other. But, we managed to find a nice place in the woods. Since we still had a little bit of light left, we decided to go across the street to a pull off to make dinner. As we were sitting there, we enjoyed the view of the ocean and the sunset. It was the perfect spot for dinner. By the time we were done with our rice, had everything cleaned and packed up, we had just enough light left to get ourselves and our bikes into the woods to the spot we had picked out. Once the tents were set up, Joey and Loic went on a little adventure to see if they could get down to the water (they had seen a road/path while we were eating). I stayed behind to relax. As we were laying in our tent we could hear a couple seals barking down by the water, along with the faint sound of the waves crashing against the shore (although that was mostly muffled out by the bugs humming in the woods). Although we had a shorter day of riding, we still got a lot done today. Our miles totaled 41.95.
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