Santa Cruz to Seaside

An even easier ride today; I rode 47 miles from Santa Cruz to Seaside, just north of Monterey. Unfortunately, I had to check into a hotel again, because I wasn't close to a campsite and I'm worried about getting rounded up by the Highway Patrol for camping - there are signs posted prohibiting camping everywhere. I'm going to make tomorrow's ride short and camp close to Big Sur. There aren't any towns between Big Sur and San Simeon, according to my map, and I don't want to be stuck in the middle of nowhere without any access to water.

I've never been more aware of the importance of water than over the last few days. It's hot work riding in the middle of the day, and I drik a ton of water, and Gatorade when I can get it. Late in the day today I had just finished filling my bike water bottle from my Camelback, a bag designed to hold about 100 ounces of water, when I knocked my bottle over before I had a chance to put the cap on. The water poured over the pavement like a blood stain; luckily I was only a few miles from the nearest town, but I kept thinking if that had been the middle of the desert I'd be sorry. Must be more vigilante with my water!

I had a nice ride today; I spent all day on the Pacific Coast bike trail. I rode through farmland for most of the way, literally miles and miles of strawberry fields and artichoke fields and fields. And I saw the hundreds and hundreds of workers that pick all the crops in every single field, every single strawberry, every artichoke, every cabbage. It must be backbreaking work in the hot sun day in and day out; I don't know what California would do with them. I've never seen more boxes of picked strawberries in my life; thousands of them loaded on to trucks headed from the fields to market. And nothing smells better than a field of strawberries; it made me hungry so I stopped for lunch at a vending truck parked on the edge of one of the strawberry farms; the truck was there mainly for the field workers, I guess. I got to practice my Spanish, as the vendors didn't speak any English. I managed to order two carne asada tacos, so not bad.

I saw lots of wildlife today, most notably a colony of ground squirrels that had to have extended for miles, they kept running across my path - I was constantly braking to avoid hitting them. And I saw a lone coyote trotting along the railroad tracks parallel to the bike path I was on. He was about 50 feet to my right just ahead of me, heading for Seaside. Maybe he was headed into town for dinner too.