Steve and Graham's Pacific Coast

The text has gone centred again below and I don't know how to fix it - sorry! Most of our day has been alongside beaches - nice enough, but they don't make for particularly good photos.  Above and below are a couple of the more interesting bits  We had a whole flat to stay in last night - this sitting / dining area / kitchen and two bedrooms. More shenanigans with payment though. We paid a $200 deposit. I was looking at my banking App in the foyer while waiting for the flat to be ready and noticed they had charged us twice for the flat itself (on top of the $200) - "oh, we made a mistake" she said "it has been refunded". They weren’t even going to mention it - hoping I wouldn't notice 😉. Neither the refund or the deposit have come back to my account as I type this,  almost 24 hours down the line! I mentioned bumping into Karen and Steve on Monday - I was annoyed with myself for not taking a picture of them

Just after we left this morning this happened - there was a very light rain shower  Once we were clear of the extremely busy school traffic we were directed onto this - I have seen films where the car chase scene drops into one of these concrete river channels  Nice old ship Not sure what this is but I gave it the benefit of the doubt and took a picture anyway  Old Eddy Merckx hung at the place we had lunch .....and this poster. It was extremely busy during the school run after we left this morning, not helped by our route taking us right past a major high school. After that section,  there was the river bank path (above) and a very long section of beach bike path. While we were on the beach path, the speed signs kept flashing at us - I think we were doing 19mph in a 10mph area - obviously we slowed down when there were other people around.  The beach section led us onto a fairly bus

I want one, only trouble is I doubt it manages 10mpg on a good day. In a similar vein, there was an old Airstream caravan in good condition but with ivy growing all over it in a garden near our motel.  A view upstream on a river we crossed - the view downstream was much the same but without the mountains as a backdrop! We passed the Naval Air Station at Ventura. They had obviously struggled to find a use for some old planes and missiles so they mounted them on the roadside for people to ogle at. A Phantom, I believe - takes me back to my airfix model building days. A F-14 Tomcat a la the original Top Gun movie. The whole display gave the birds somewhere to perch - as we pedalled away a crow landed on the sharp end of a Polaris missile 😉. Cycling on the bike path along the beach at Manhattan Beach. The dark spot just below centre frame is Steve and Karen on their fully loaded Co-Motion tandem. We chatted to them when we caught

Climbing to just over 300m on CA 1 Looking back Bullrushes  Rigs, way out to sea The front at Santa Barbara  A plover  Our day started along CA 1 to the top of a kind of pass through arid hills (1). That section went on for 30km or so before dropping to an intersection where CA 1 joined into US Highway 101, following the coast. 101 was like an old friend - the kind of old friend that if you see them in the supermarket, you duck down an aisle and hope they haven't seen you 😉. It was about 70km along these two highways before we came to any kind of shop or cafe.  Soon after that we were on a cycleway called the Obern Trail for quite a way.  Not sure if it was still the Obern but we followed cycle paths along the front at Santa Barbara. At one point we were on a concrete path along the top of the beach, with sand to either side of us.  There were a lot of dozy people milling around on this section so

Quite a lot of agriculture again today  Not sure what these are - any ideas anyone  They mostly use these 'leggy' tractors for light duty up the rows. When the crops are done they used big tracked tractors for heavy pulling of ploughs etc. I really want a picture of one of those beasts - we passed one pulling a heap of implements today but it wasn't a safe place for us to stop. Finally, it brightened up and we had some views I don't think we have seen these since Kansas on TransAm  It was a bit murky and uninspiring first thing but that didn't seem to dampen down the big numbers of day ride cyclists we chanced across early in our day. We passed some on a fairly soulless road which shadowed Highway 101 (yes, 101 is back - we haven't seen that for a few days) - Steve and I joked about what the cyclists here might give for the network of beautiful lanes we have in the UK

We soon lost the sun from the immediate surroundings of our lodge last night, so I trekked up to the viewpoint to put our washing in the sun - what better place to sit, chill and listen to American rock bands on my  phone 🙂. Looks like someone has banged in an abseil anchor - maybe their washing disappeared over the edge 😉 I had imagined I would see lots of sunsets over the ocean on this trip but we always seem to be in a restaurant or back from the coast in the evening .....finally!! I had to climb over the fence to get the shot, but it's OK, no-one was looking! We had a 'grab and go" breakfast included with our extremely expensive room. I'm bemused by their thought process - "these muffins are a bit expensive, let's cut them in half". Luckily I blagged double breakfast for Steve and I from the cleaning lady. The hilly stuff of yesterday continued for about 40km and then the coast flattened ou