31st May – Ridgecrest to Santa Maria

This morning was cool and windy – at least that’s how it felt in the room with the a/c on but the heat hit us as soon as we walked out of the door. As we were still struggling to digest the meals from last night we both passed on breakfast and were on the road by 9.15. Our route took us on some minor roads until we joined Highway 14 towards Mojave. This was desert terrain again and it is striking how much of the West seems to be desert. From a distance it often looks green but close-up it is just bushes with a lot of sand and dust between them.

From the 14, we took the 58 through Caliente to Arvin where we needed to find Old River Road. Asking the way at a gas station a friendly local gave us detailed directions which turned out to be completely wrong. Had we followed them we would probably have ended up in Fresno! Mark still harbours a deep, brooding resentment against this individual and we may return to Arvin after dark to burn his house down. Fortunately at another gas station, while I was inside wasting $5 on an utterly useless map, Mark found a friendly and knowledgeable trucker who confirmed that his original instincts had been correct and we just needed to continue for a while in the direction we were going.

Not long after joining the Old River Road we began to climb into the mountains and began to see grass and trees again. Coming down the other side there was a wide expanse of rich agricultural land with fields as big as Yorkshire! This is all due to irrigation, though it is not clear where the water comes from; it seems to be pumped up from underground. We also saw a number of work-crews harvesting the produce by hand.

We climbed up into more mountains after that and had an enjoyable ride along fairly narrow winding roads, sometimes with quite sheer cliffs at the side. Unfortunately after nearly 200 miles and 5 hours on the bikes in 90 degree heat we were getting tired and didn’t enjoy it as much as we could have done earlier in the day. Dropping down the other side of the mountains the air began to cool and we could feel the breeze blowing in off the sea.

After about 220 miles we arrived at our destination – Santa Maria – who we like to think of as Santa Barbara’s slightly less attractive and cheaper sister.

We found the hotel (a Holiday Inn again) easily enough and it is probably one of the best we have stayed in. The room has a balcony, where we can stand and wave at the bikes, and even a small kitchen area and breakfast bar. We also took full advantage of the “fitness suite”, outdoor pool and laundrette. Oh, and did I mention that it also has a bar!

Having had a couple of beers in the hotel bar we decided to do something different and dined with the cream of Santa Maria society at the local Burger King. It was great to enjoy some quintessentially British cuisine again (!) and the bacon cheeseburger (aka the “Superstacker”) was a fine as anything Birmingham New Street Station can offer. And at $4.99 for an evening meal – what’s not to like? However we were still a little peckish, and on the way back we dropped into a “Foodmaxx” store which was a vast, no-frills depository of every form of foodstuff known to humanity. Although there was enough junk food to keep a small country going for years there was also a very wide variety of really nice looking fresh local fruit and vegetables (and yes, we did buy some fruit to go with the 20 kilo sack of cheesy nachos!).

Today was, we hope, the last long ride for a while. San Francisco is only about 200 miles from here and we have two days to get there. Tomorrow we are planning to stay in Carmel which is about 100 miles north of here along the coast.