Sept 6, 2024 Morro Bay, the Sequel

 

Friday, September 6  Morro Bay, the Sequel

Humans, are you awake?  My water fell over and I need more.  Humans????

Today, we wanted an early start as we were going to attempt to bike the Cerro San Luis volcano.  I pointed it out to Spouse the day before.  I knew it would be ambitious but Spouse said if we don’t like it, we can turn around.  Right?

We leave before 7:30.   We have to start out on city streets for the half mile to the Madonna Inn.  Surviving that, we go to the start of the bike trail.  It is odd that they don’t have a bike ramp to get on the trail.  We had to lift our bikes over the curb.  As we progress, it feels like a warm scirocco is sweeping off the volcano into our faces.  We get to the trailhead and maneuver our bikes past the gates.  I show Spouse the map.  Then we start up the trail. 

                                                

I hiked part of this trail so I knew it was wide.  It is essentially a fire road, at least when you are walking it.  Spouse saw a smaller trail off the side and grumped that he is not doing that trail, which wasn’t part of the plan but I could see the grumptitude starting to ooze.  With ebikes, we definitely needed lots of pedal assist.  At some points, it was kind of like a motocross with little bumps up then down.  And it was getting steep.  My seat started moving so I stopped to fix it.  BAD MOVE!  It was too steep to get started again.  The wheels just spun out.  We were about 50 feet from a bench, so we walked our bikes to the bench and rested.  Spouse’s grumptitude was in full display!  But we said, if we didn’t like it, we would turn around.  You don’t know unless you try.  It was pretty steep going down.  I gave Spouse a whole lot of room to get ahead of me, but somehow we survived. 

Since we were near the grocery store, we pedaled over.  It was about 20 degrees cooler, for all of about 10 minutes.  We then decided to pedal over to a bike trail on the other side of the Elks.  Last year, there were a lot of homeless camps.  This time, only two.  The trail follows a creek for about 2 miles.  Then we returned home.

We cleaned up, then headed back to Morro Bay with the Boals to visit Carol.  Carol was the person that introduced me to Spouse.  The rest is history!

 We walked the rock again.  Lots of otters out today.  They tangle themselves in the kelp so they can rest without drifting.  They are the cutest little beings!  At the end of the rock is a forest of ‘inukyuks’, which are towers of stacked rocks that signify safe passing.  They have other names and spellings, but that is the best I can do.

We stopped for some steamed clams, then headed back to the Elks.  It is a ‘cook your own steak or salmon’ night at the Elks, so we obliged!  A nice visit with the Boals’ friend Dierdre was part of the fun.