Day 56 - San Clemente - Newport/Huntington Beach (70km)

This morning we slept in to 7:30am and started biking along the designated bike route through the O.C suburbs. After 2 days of rain on the entire trip we got rained on about 10kms from Newport Beach. Once at Newport Beach we repeated what we had done two months earlier and caught the ferry from Balboa Island to the Beach where we stripped down and plunged into the Pacific to officially end our bike trip. The water was alot warmer than the previous two months and we had a quick body surf before getting taught a lesson by the local shore break.

After we dried off we continued up the coast to Huntington Beach where the hostel we intended on staying was full. We organised for the bikes to be boxed up and stored for the next week and hunted around for some reasonably priced accommodation. We also arranged for a rental car to take us on a road trip to Vegas and Death Valley.

Day 55 - Julian - San Clemente (152km)

Today we hit the coast! After 45 days of biking (plus 10 rest days) we reached the Pacific. The day started off with a decent downhill to a town called San Ysabel where we waited for 15 minutes for the local bakery to open.

The stretch to the coast was relatively uneventful. The road got busy as we neared the coast, but included alot of downhill as we were dropping to sea level from over 4000ft.

Arrived in Oceanside to find out that the camping was a good 15-20 miles up the road. As we had a bit of energy we decided to continue on. As we were not allowed on the interstate we had to go through a military base where the the very young officer at the gate told us we could nt camp at the marked campsite on our tourist map. Turned out he was wrong, but we had no supplies so we continued up the road to San Clemente State Beach where we camped with an ocean view. Pretty sweet camping at the beach where they have 'hike and bike' rates which were $3 a piece. Riding through the military base was pretty good as there was almost no traffic on the road. Every now and again we would come across signs saying tank crossing etc.

We also met an interesting (and rather crazy) lady who camped next to us. She took a bit of shine to young David and told us that he looked like Jesus!!

That night it got cold and we got rained on pretty hard. We were quite relieved that we didn't have to use the wet and muddy tents again once we had folded them.

Day 54 - Brawley - Julian (128km)

After the hills in Arizona (and the previous day) we thought it would be plain sailing across the rest of California until we had a chat to some locals who informed us that the town of Julian was at 4200ft! We started the day knowing we had to climb this distance so we pulled out the trusty GPS to check out what altitude we were at to work out how much climbing we had to do. The GPS had us at 2000ft so a 2000ft climb over 120ks or so wasn't too bad. The first two hours of riding involved a gentle climb and after 60km we passed a sign that said that we were at 1000ft of elevation. We couldn't believe it! Turned out that the town of Brawley is 110ft below sea level and played havoc with the GPS so they day turned into 4300ft of climbing!

The town of Julian is pretty nice and touristy and much greener than the desert we ascended from. We were lucky enough to catch it on a saturday so were joined by all the weekend warriors from San Diego on their Harleys. We chilled out in the town for a few hours then headed to a campsite about 7 miles out of town. About 2 miles from the campground there was a sign saying that the campground was full, but we decided to chance it anyway and would beg if necessary to stay there as we were not keen on going much further!

On arrival the Ranger wasn't that sympathetic at first, but after a bit he felt sorry for us and let us camp in one of the day use areas (as long as we were long gone before his boss arrived the next morning). Lets just say we were pretty relieved as the nearest other campsite was a good 10 - 15 miles away!