We made this a short day because we had been pushing ourselves too hard. My knee started to feel a stabbing pain, so I had to make a ton of stops. The big hills on highway 1 were beautiful, but also horrifying because there wasn’t a guard rail. It was remote and trickled with vacation homes, with painful up and downs.
On one of the painful ups, we cycled through a burn area and could taste the ash in the air, and see it on the ground. At the top of the hill, we met Craig, a cyclist we hadn’t seen yet.
He was cycling from Seattle to San Francisco, but he was taking 3 months to do it. We chatted with him a bit and kept going, with plans to meet up with him later.
When we finally got to Bodega Bay Dunes State Park, the lady working at the visitor center rejected us due to COVID. No hiker/biker spots were allowed to be in use. We could’ve gotten a hotel but Bodega Bay was pretty pricey, so we begged for help at the visitor center. The guy working in the office was actually also a ranger for Bodega Bay Dunes State Park, and he gave us the go ahead to camp there.
We returned to the park, and the person working at the entrance was not very apologetic about turning us away the first time. We awkwardly cycled in, and found that Craig somehow already was there with two other cyclists cycling from Seattle to San Diego.
We ended up all having another “Pacific Coast Party” and we made Spanish Tortillas, cake, pizza and drank wine. It was a night that I’ll never forget.
That girl on a bike 