Happy Halloween!!! This morning I looked at a couple things on Facebook and saw that Greg and Lea (who we road with over a month ago already!!) dressed little Ronja up as a pumpkin! When we were riding with them, we were talking about dressing her up, and I was happy to see that they really did. She looked so cute! Joe and I had a muffin for breakfast and got everything packed. Mike had to leave for work and we were soon to follow as we hit the road to ride through Santa Barbara. It was such a cute little downtown/shopping area! I loved all of the 'mexicanie' looking buildings and of course the palm trees! A few places, we saw a bunch of kids dressed up for Halloween walking all together in a group (probably a pre school or grade school class). Other than that, it didn't really feel like Halloween at all. At home, it is chilly and there are fall leaves all over the place to rustle through as you walk down the sidewalk- but here, it just feels like summertime and there are definitely no leaves! Even still, it was really fun to ride through Santa Barbara. The three of us stopped in the town of Carpenteria for lunch. There was a tiny little buffet there, but they didn't look like they had much variety. Although we have been talking about going to a buffet with Loic for a while, we knew we could do better. We found a Vons supermarket, which is exactly the same as a Safeway. Joey and I had some cereal and milk for lunch and enjoyed a snack of cinnamon rolls that I picked up too. We didn't plan on having to ride too many miles today since we planned to stop in Ventura for the night. There is a coffeehouse called "Sandbox Coffeehouse" that is on Warm Showers. We thought it was really neat because they have a deck and an enclosed patio area that they allow cyclists to camp at. Although they will be closed for the holiday today, they said that we were still welcome to camp there and use the free wifi too. So, that is a possible plan. However, we all were hoping to go to a buffet as well- which would put us about 5 miles past the coffeehouse. We figured we would just play it by ear and figure it out then. We enjoyed the ride along the beautiful coast, watching the surfers in action, and of course the beautiful sunshine we keep having. When we found the coffee house, which ended up being pretty easy, we sat there for a little bit trying to decide what to do. Loic even flipped a coin and it indicated to stay and camp there. We were still hoping for a buffet, but when we called the pizza restaurant, they didn't have a lunch buffet today. In the end however, we decided to keep riding. We only had about 35 miles and the area the coffee shop was in wouldn't lend itself well to seeing more trick-or-treaters (we wanted Loic to see a little more of an American Halloween, since they don't really celebrate it in France). From Ventura, we rode along the ocean and found ourselves in Oxnard. We took a little detour to go to the downtown area which was a little over a mile or two from the ocean. The area was so flat. We rode through a bunch of planted fields and then all of a sudden were in the middle of a very suburban area. Since we were hungry, we stopped at the Vons and got some stuff to make a "Loic Sub." There were some nice tables right out front which made it easy. From there we figured we would ride about 5 more miles or so before finding a place to camp whether it be at a church or in "the bush." We continued on along the water for about 5 more miles. The whole area was either stores or residential. We did however get to see a house, one of the very few (hardly anyone decorates anymore!), that was all decked out for Halloween. There weren't too many trick-or-treaters out yet because it wasn't quite dark yet. We continued on through that area and then all of a sudden found ourselves at a fence- the road didn't go any further. The whole residential are was in the shape of a giant "U" and so we had to turn around and go back. There was no way to go any further straight or away from the ocean because there was a Naval Base right there. So we backtracked a couple miles and found the roads that would take us out of town. By that time it was dark and we did get to see some more trick-or-treaters! It was kind of neat riding along and hearing kids yell "trick-or-treat" off in the distance. The best thing about it was that the cars were being extra cautious because there were kids all over the place, so that made us feel a little better about riding in the dark. We eventually found the road that would take us to Highway 1. It took us through town-we only saw 1 church and it had a school attached to it, so that wasn't an option. There was no "bush" to go hide ourselves in either. So we just kept riding. After going all the way around the Naval Base, we were out of the city. Still, no place to camp. Now we were surrounded by planted fields again. We rode by a Dole packaging place and then found Highway 1, which was a Freeway at that point, so we weren't allowed to ride on it. We rode just past the 1 and were lucky to find a patch of bushes and trees to camp in- it came just in time because we had no clue where we needed to go from here since we couldn't ride on the 1 yet. It will be much easier to find our way in the daylight! As we were pushing our bikes into where we would camp, Joey said "Look, there's a tiger!" Sure enough, there was! Under the tree, there was a big tiger stuffed animal, which had been here for quite a while because it was a bit faded and was pretty much "glued" to the dirt. What a fun little memory for our Halloween camp spot! Well, we ended up with a LOT more miles than we planned on today, but it is ok because we are a little further down the road. Probably about 6-7 miles worth of our total miles, however was not in the right direction since we had to do so much backtracking today. I guess places like this area it would be helpful to have a "GPS," but we managed ok. This is the first time in a long time that we got "lost" just using our AAA maps, so it's ok. If we hadn't gotten "lost" we wouldn't have seen the house all decorated and seen more trick-or-treaters. We all went to bed pretty much right away when we got everything set up. Our miles totaled 63.19.
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