Day 20: Back on the road! Hotel to Half Moon Bay Campground. 23 miles.

Hank and I were very excited to get back on the road, but we sure did enjoy our day off.  When I was looking at the weather forecast this morning I noticed that there was going to be a headwind all day.  We haven’t had any all day rides into a headwind yet on our trip.  Once we got going we had 4 miles of riding from the hotel to get back to the route that runs along the beach.  The sun was out and it was beautiful!  By the time we got to the top of the first hill, which was only a mile or two away, we hit the headwind.  It was much stronger than I had anticipated.  It was blowing so hard it felt like I was riding on two flat tires!  It was blowing at least 20 mph right in my face.  What also doesn’t help is the wind that the panniers catch.  If it wasn’t for the extra weight of the panniers and the extra wind they catch the wind wouldn’t be that big of a deal.  But here Hank and I are pedaling as hard as we can into this wind and we’re only going 4 miles per hour.  After an hour we finally get back to the beach where the wind was blowing even harder.  Don’t get me wrong, it is still beautiful.  After all we are biking the California coast, so how bad could it be? 

Below is a picture of a really cool hill climb we did today.  It wasn’t very hard to get up because the trail was cut into the hillside in a bunch of switchbacks.  So we just slowly made our way up by going back and forth a bunch of times.  Hank thought it would be a lot more fun to go down!  I thought so too.  We think alike sometimes.

There were three very cool beach areas we cycled through where surfers were out in the waves having a great time.  At Pacifica Beach we stopped and watch a surfing competition for a few minutes.  There were tons of people lining the beach and photographers taking pictures of the surfers while announcers told the names of the surfers and the names of the moves they were making.  It was a lot of fun, but we had a hill to climb and on the other side of that hill was a whole lot of fog waiting for us.

Once we got to the top of the hill the wind was really howling!  It was blowing at least 40 mph right in my face.  So hard that at one point I had to pedal to go DOWN HILL!  You would think gravity would do its job and pull us downhill, and it was trying, but the wind was blowing so hard it was trying to blow us back up the hill.  We made it down the hill as we always do, but when we got to the other side it was really cold.  It went from around 70 degrees and sunny to the foggy and in the mid 50s in a matter of half a mile. 

Once we got down off the hill we didn’t have much farther to get to camp since it was such a short ride today.  When we got to Half Moon Bay I looked off into the ocean and saw a whale!  We stopped to watch and ended up seeing at least three.  They would come up and blow air and water out so we could see them.  Once one of them came up and flipped its tail in the air so we could see it.  It was huge!  They are such beautiful animals.   

Hank and I were very excited when we pulled into camp and saw some friends from our earlier rides.  Hank and Carlos are hanging out right now under the tree in the picture below.  It sure is nice to run into friends.  It makes the end of the day so nice to have someone to talk to and share the events of the day with.

 Foggy but still beautiful!

Tomorrow we continue south!