Searching for the Ocean

We left Yosemite to head back to the coast…

Midpines to Merced.  Merced to San Luis Resevoir. San Louis to Mt Madonna. Finishing up in Santa Cruz.

A fairly uneventful start, we went up up up then dooooown into the San Joaquin Valley and the un ending flat. Event of the day was seeing a freight train with over 100 carriages!

From Merced we continued on the endless and uninterrupted flat and straight roads, a corner was a big event. When the wind and rain set against us, the Sheriff pulled in front of us with his lights flashing and offered us a lift. Apparently he saw the look on Laura’s face and decided she wasn’t having fun…he was right!  He was what you would stereotypically imagine a Sheriff to be – hat, badge, gun, checked shirt and called all the bad guys ‘knuckleheads’. Dropped us off at the park where we had the lakeside campsite to ourselves. Thanks Vern!

Being saved by friendly locals continued to be a theme, we found ourselves walking up he central reservation of the equivalent to a motorway when we were offered a lift, leap frogging 25miles in the safety of a big pick up truck. We pushed on into the Diablo range where we arrived at a campground to be invited in to join Tony and his family for dinner and beer…bikes continue to make friends and we spent the evening surrounded by dogs, children and friendly people.

On Thanksgiving, with festivity in the air, we pushed on for the fourth and final day to the coast, low on energy but happy to finally see the sea (or should I say Pacific Ocean?!) at Santa Cruz for a day off.