This year a lot of folks showed up for the pigeon point trip.
Kekoa and I joined Piaw and ~11 others on an overnight trip to the pigeon point lighthouse.
Kekoa and I have been thinking about joining one of Piaw's bike tours for a while.
This year he wants to visit the german-speaking alps (proposal here.
According to Piaw, to be eligible, we must at least do his pigeon point trip.
His argument is that at least he will know we aren't slow pokes getting ready in the morning, and that we won't completely melt when having to ride on dirt.
We even had a SAG car, complete with racks for 4 bikes!
Folks who weren't trying to qualify for a "Piaw Tour" were allowed to put all their luggage into the SAG car to get driven to the lighthouse.
Since Kekoa and I were trying to see what touring was like, we both borrowed bagmans and Carradice bags from others, and biked to the lighthouse with our worldly possessions our on bikes.
(Well, except for Kekoa's big camera and our sleeping bags, which we wouldn't bring on a real tour.)
If you liked this trip report,
you can also see the rest of our trip reports here.
Day 1 - From Sunnyvale to the Lighthouse
Pigeon Point Lighthouse
"nightlife" at the Lighthouse
On Saturday, this was our general route: We started from Sunnyvale, went up Montebello Rd, crossed over the fire road / dirt trail that connected Montebello and Page Mill Rd, descended Page Mill, climbed Haskins Hill, stopped at a goat farm (!!), then stopped again at the Arcangeli market in Pescadero for lunch.
After lunch, we took Gazos Creek Road to Hwy 1, where we rode north for a short section to get to the lighthouse.
The weather was perfect on Saturday, albeit a bit cold.
We didn't see any peacocks climbing Montebello, but it was very very pretty.
The visibility was wonderful the whole weekend.
The dirt road scared me a bit, I've never had to grab my brakes so much descending something...
I'm told that the dirt road was "easier" this time due to all the rain and stuff, personally I thought it was quite scary -_-.
I was pretty glad to make it to Page Mill. After that - the views from West Alpine were gorgeous.
At this time of year, everything was just so green and lush, compared to the brown colors of summer.
One of my favorite parts of the trip was stopping to pet the baby goats on North Rd. They were soooooo soooooo sooooo cute.
Cute. Baby. Goats. That's all.
I also finally got to experience the garlic artichoke bread from Arcangeli market, which was also soooooo good.
Piaw bought an extra 6 loaves to share with the group for dinner and breakfast the next day (yum).
After a long lunch, we finally got back on our bikes, and arrived at the lighthouse after fighting quite a BIG headwind on Hwy 1.
This short 2 mile section totally convinced Kekoa that it would be crazy to try and bike the Pacific coast from South to North.
The lighthouse itself was very quaint.
The hostel was divided into a few buildings (Seal, Dolphin, ...), and most of them had a fully equipped kitchen.
Thanks to Catherine, we had SO MUCH FOOD, and basically the whole group ended up eating from 4pm - 9:30pm ish.
It was awesome.
We had cajun chicken meat balls, a whole wheel of brie cheese, pasta, turkey meatballs, salami, lots of bread, lots of cheese, salad with corn, tomatoes, avocados, chips and salsa, edamame, raspberries, blueberries, olallieberry pie (super yum), and probably much more that I can't remember.
Ok, all that food talk, the best part was still probably the hot tub.
The hot tub is outdoors, and the lighthouse is a bit windy and cold.
It felt really good for all our tired muscles, plus the cold air makes the hot tub just that much more rewarding.
I'd bike back there again just so I can sit in that hot tub... hmmm.
Observations from Day 1: Climbing with a load, is much, MUCH harder.
I didn't expect a few lbs to feel this much harder!
Kekoa and I did Page Mill (which I think is a harder climb than Montebello) a few weeks ago, and Page Mill without a load was definitely easier!
Baby goats are very very cute.
Bread is yummy. Hot tubs are awesome.
Day 2 - Lighthouse and back home
Pigeon Point Lighthouse at Night
Cute baby goats eating
Today we woke up to once again blue skies and clear weather, and as an added bonus, there was barely any wind!
Once again, Catherine and Co. provided a lot of food.
For breakfast, I remember yummy omelettes made by Mike, yummy fatty normal bacon, turkey bacon, lots of bread and cheese, salami, and probably a lot of stuff I don't remember.
After stuffing our faces with breakfast, we packed up and got back on the bikes, ready for our ride back home.
Our general route today: Bean Hollow Rd, Stage Rd, up Tunitas, down Kings, then since we were a bit tired, we took Sand Hill instead of the Portola loop to get Foothill, and finally we rode Fremont back to Piaw's place.
The roads we biked on were really pretty today, the mustard flowers were in full force, and it was just pretty pretty.
It was also much warmer than the day before.
We stopped at the St. Gregorio store and a few of us got hot chocolate (which in hindsight, I wish I did too...) and off we went to Tunitas.
Tunitas itself was very pretty, but once again, a bit more painful than I remember (I hope it's the bag on the back of my bike, really).
One of the more painful things was the fact that my butt has forgotten how to sit on a saddle for long periods of time.
In the beginning of the day my butt hurt a bit, and while biking across the bumpy section of the top of Tunitas, owwww.
What amazed me is after all the eating I did last night and also consuming lots of bacon and bread, my stomach was growling at the top of Tunitas!
Thank goodness Kekoa convinced me to bring lots of food.
After descending Kings it was mostly a flat ride home, which was a good thing, as we were all pretty tired (minus Piaw and Lisa).
Observations from Day 2: My butt needs breaking in, Stage Road is MUCH MUCH easier without a headwind.
Climbing makes me hungry.
This was a pretty fun trip, the hot tub made it totally worth it.
Pigeon point is a very pretty spot, apparently popular with cyclists too, as there were 3 separate groups who cycled there to stay overnight during our stay.
One thing I really enjoyed was knowing that most of what we needed to survive was with us. We could have biked to Santa Cruz and stayed the night if we wanted to!
I also need to train harder or something, as climbing with stuff on a bike, just feels much harder.
I'm dragging Kekoa to bike to the coast and back this weekend to make sure it was the load that made everything feel so hard.
