- Day 8 98 km (61 miles)
- Lompoc to Santa Barbara
- Total 673 km (418 miles)
Merry Christmas! Another dry start, the best I gift I can ask for. Typically, Hilton Garden Inn does not offer free breakfast, but perhaps the staff was in the holiday spirit (or needed to purge their mini mart) and offered breakfast to go bag for the guests. Nothing compares to the Quality Inn breakfast, but I’m not complaining either!
We made our way through rolling hills and countryside before dropping down into Gaviota valley. The 2-mile downhill stretch was trilling, and I topped out at 40 miles an hour. We had to jump onto the 101 for the rest of the way into Santa Barbara. Riding on the highway with cars whizzing by at 60 mph sounds daunting, but I still felt safer than on the 1 through Big Sur. Sure it helped that the traffic was relatively light, and it was not raining, but mostly because the shoulders was at least a full lane width and there were very few exits/entrances for merging traffic. The only exception to this carefree riding was the narrow bridge over Arroyo Quemado, where you had to rely on a flashing sign alerting drivers of bicyclist in the middle of the lane due to the lack of a shoulder.
We had lunch at Refugio State Beach, which would have been our home for the night if we didn’t have a hotel lined up. Once again, the campground was barely occupied, and we had plenty of picnic tables to settle down at. We chose the hiker biker site, which was situated in a prime location as a beachfront corner lot. Now I understand why others claimed this was the best campsite of this type along the entire route.
To avoid the highway, we took a bike path that hugged the shore and led us to El Capitan. Toward the end of the path, we ran into a gate that marked the path closed. Since we didn’t want to backtrack, we decided to ignore the sign and follow the makeshift path that skirted around the gate. Turns out the gate was there for a reason, as half of the path has washed out. We stayed toward the inside and powered through, which was risky since the dirt beneath the path was likely caved in.
Finally, we made it into Santa Barbara, passing through UCSD, Sterns Wharf, and arriving at the Hilton Santa Barbara Beachfront Resort. Thankfully we were in a town for Christmas, so there was plenty of restaurants open for dinner. We checked out Stearns Wharf and then wandered down State Street until we came upon the bustling Himalayan Kitchen. It was pouring when we finished our Christmas dinner, so we took a Lyft back to the hotel. We ended with a nightcap at the bar with courtesy drink vouchers that came with the room.
Hike a day in my boots 