Monday, 25 July 2011

No earth quake so we ride on

Ok we slept through safely on the American Plate at Parkfield after having the whole town to ourselves. today we started out nicely after redrawing the route to give up a big descent for a more simple navigation. This sounded good while we rode through nice horse and cattle country




However after 10 km we came across our friend from yesterday the gravel road.
So we packed the bikes into the van (we are getting good at this) and Peter drove up and over the range. It was sort of a TomTom moment as we basically climbed up a mountain range on a poor condition gravel road which looked ok on TT, but luckily no one came from the other way.



But at the summit we changed from Monterey County to Fresno County and guess what the road was sealed. We then commenced a scenic descent while on the look out for bobcats and coyotes (probably) little chance of seeing one.



Then we road throughout 2 canyons as we descended and cornered our way to Coalinga. Here is Rocket rolling out of the canyon.
It then got hot, 32 but 40 on the road.
We then rode through flat farm country where we had lunch under the one tree for miles. The usual ham, cheese, baguette, pickle plus avocado and bananas at 49c a pound. Plus nice freshly picked strawberries.



Here is the grand duke setting a mean pace in the sun. Amazingly Rocket caught up with the farmer who was at the Parkfield Inn the afternoon before.




Of course we needed to recover in the pool at the end of the day.


Tomorrow is another transit stage to near Yosemite National park which has a very big climb at the end of the day.

Today we had our first flat which was claimed by Ferdy with 10 km to go. This was worth 50 points and put the Grand Duke into gold again.-posted by pw from ipad

Location:Wilson Ln,Hanford,United States

2 comments:

  1. Did you figure out which side of the road to drive on now?...
    And why did you choose California? :-). There are other countries, nearly as nice and with GREAT food.
    All my support to pedal and all of you guys!
    good luck!
    /C

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  2. We already did Europe and you can get anything you want here as long it's not at Alice's restaurant

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