Day 36 – New Brighton State Beach to Salinas
Well, we had a few beers with some hardcore riders in camp last night and what they told us was not good regarding our planned bike trip. We had planned to ride down to Santa Barbara but we just found out that highway one is closed past Big Sur for the next few months due to a landslide and a broken bridge. In order for us to transit around the closures we would have to bike over the mountains and travel for a hundred and sixty kilometers on highway 101 before we could rejoin highway one near San Simeon. Traveling on highway 101 would be like biking from Toronto to Kingston on the shoulder of the 401 highway in Ontario. Plus, add to that the fact that temperatures inland are currently in the high 40’s and highway 101 offers no services for cyclists.
We are beaten and that’s a fact. The one rider, who claimed his bike had 100,000 miles on it, said he would never ride that detour as it’s too brutal, even for him! So we have decided to cut our trip short and make for the Salinas Amtrak station and begin our long journey back home.
