Pacific Coast Bike Tour Day 35 & 36 – Pismo Beach & Gaviota

Bicycle Touring, United States

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By Ryan Gargiulo

Well, there’s not much to tell you about our stay at Morro Bay State Park other than that it had a pretty decent hiker/biker area. The following morning we made our way to Pismo Beach, CA.

This evening we camped at the local town park (county park?) here in Pismo, about a half mile north of Pier Ave (main road leading to Pismo Beach). The cost for putting up your tent here is $28 if I’m not mistaken. The scoop was that the cost is for the actual campsite so if you found other cyclists in the makeshift hiker/biker area of this campground, you could ask them if they would mind if you put up your tent next to theirs and split the cost down the middle.

We rolled up to the hiker biker area and met two British cyclists that we had ran into at Morro Bay State Park. We asked them if they cared if we slapped down our tent and before we knew it we were sitting around the table sharing stories and laughing the night away. Two more female cyclists pulled up and asked if they could camp on the site. Yet again, we split the money down the middle. In the end I think we ended up paying about $4-5/per person.

The unfortunate thing about this campground is that it sits between the Amtrak on one side and Route 1 on the other. Not only do you get the road noise but you also get the Amtrak rolling by blowing it’s horns. It was by far the loudest night of the trip. Don’t plan on getting much sleep if you end up staying here.

The only good thing that came out of our stay at the county park campground was that we met some great new friends and we had now formed a bike gang of sorts.

Dune Buggies in Pismo Beach

Oceano Dunes - Pismo Beach

The following morning Will and I headed over to Pismo Beach to meet up with Sunbuggy. They were nice enough to invite Will and I to come check out their Pismo Beach location and I couldn’t have been more excited to roll with these guys again after the fun I had out in Vegas.

Sunbuggy Pismo Beach

Coincidentally enough, we stumbled upon a huge truck jumping festival going on over on the dunes of Pismo Beach. We locked our bikes up in front of the Oceano Dunes and Jeff from Sunbuggy came and picked us up. Jeff took us down the beach to the Sunbuggy mobile office which is located right on the sand of Pismo Beach.

Sunbuggy Pismo Beach

We spent some time chatting with Jeff and watched a short instructional dvd telling us how the dune buggies work, what to avoid, and so on. I had done this previously, but when we were out in Vegas we chased a lead driver who was a staff member of Sunbuggy.

Today would be a little different as we would be taking the dune buggy out on our own. The freedom was in our hands, we just had to stay in control!

Sunbuggy Pismo Beach

Whatever you do, do not miss the video below!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MAC7z0yMnE

We had an absolute blast tearing around the dunes of Pismo Beach with Sunbuggy. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to really push the limits in the dune buggy due to the fact that there were so many people out on the dunes in their trucks, atv’s, dirtbikes, etc. It can get pretty scary when you come smoking up over a dune and there’s guys on ATV’s coming straight at you. Things could have gotten ugly quick. We definitely enjoyed ourselves but if we were to do it again we surely wouldn’t do it during Huckfest.

On the Road Again…

Once we got our adrenaline fix for the day, we hopped back on our bikes and got a late start to a long mileage day. Thankfully, the first 20 miles of the day were a breeze.

We rode through a town called Guadalupe, CA and I’m not kidding when I tell you that I had to do a double take while riding through it. I literally thought we had made it to Mexico. Everything was in Spanish and it had this real old, flat, desert look to it. Almost like an old Mexican ghost town of sorts.

Cycling through Guadalupe, CA

After Guadalupe Route 101 splits right to the 1. We had one or two big hills and now that big tailwind was directly in our faces. We took a couple breaks along the way to break up the climb as the headwinds were out of control at this point.

Once we got to the top we cruised down into Lompoc. When I looked down and saw that we had ridden 44 miles in 2.5 hours, I almost didn’t believe it. That was surely a record pace for us. We only had about 24 miles left to go to get to Gaviota State Park where we would meet up with our new friends Roxanne, John and Ana.

While we were in Lompoc, I got a frozen yogurt from Yogurt Creations and we ended up stumbling upon our friend Ana at the Starbucks next door. Myself, Will and Ana rode the rest of the way together to Gaviota.

Pacific Coast Bike Tour - Pismo to Gaviota

The ride was pretty easy with very few hills to worry about. We cruised down the last stretch on brand new pavement on the 101 and we broke a new speed record. 42.8 mph!

Pacific Coast Bike Tour - Pismo to Gaviota

We arrived at Gaviota State Park and paid $10/pp for hiker/biker camping. We found this to be unusual considering all of the State Parks in California had been $5/per person up until today. The park ranger claimed that $10 per person is the standard in California. Sorry Sir, but we beg to differ!

Gaviota State Park

Once we paid we were on our way to the hiker/biker area where we met with our friends John and Roxanne and planned out our route for the following day to Carpenteria.

Today’s Mileage: 67 mi

Don’t miss: Pacific Coast Bike Tour Day 33 & 34: Big Sur!

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