Today we started off at 10:45am from Oceano.  We were expecting this to be a long day and we were right.  The first part of the ride was through a lot of farmland.  Lots of crops but strawberries were for sure the most popular.  You could smell them from the road! We rode into the first town, Guadalupe, it felt like we were in Mexico here! Lots of Mexican influence here!   From there we were off towards Lompoc. 

The ride was really flat and we rode beside so much farmland.  We even got sprinkled on by some sprinklers for the crops!  We were on Highway 1 for the whole time.  Traffic got a little busier as we got closer to Lompoc but we had a nice wide shoulder to ride on! On the way into Lompoc is the Vandenberg Air Force base.  It looked like a huge facility! 

After Lompoc, there really wasn't any place to stop that had any services so we just kept riding though the foothills on Highway 1.  There were some uphills but nothing to worry about.  The terrain was not as exciting as the ocean!  We finally got back to the ocean after about 40km.  We were on Highway 101 now and near Gaviota State Park.  There are huge wind gusts here.  We were very alert but the shoulder was very wide so we had lots of space to move from side to side if the wind picked up! We were riding beside the ocean and there was also the Amtrak railroad on our right as well. 

We saw the Amtrak passenger train, it looked very nice!  We noticed that tis section of Highway 101 has lamp posts with a bell shaped  ornament on top.  There were some signs that said El Camino Real which is what the bells symbolize.  We'll have to do some research to find out what this means. Along the way, we saw a large group of cyclists doing a supported ride. 

We didn't get a chance to talk to them to find out what they were up to but they all seemed to stop at one of the state beaches. We rode off Highway 101 into Goleta which is like a suburb of Santa Barbara.  It was a little difficult to find a motel here but we eventually found one. 

The hotels seem fairly spread out in the area we were in.  We finally got settled in around 8:30pm, our latest arrival on the trip so far.  We're relaxing now and ecited about riding along the beach tomorrow!

Pacific Coast Bike Route: Day 27

June, 29 I  Oceano - Goleta, California I United State I  Km, 156.79

This bell is... El Camino Real... it is a Mission Trail