Day 5

Got up this morning and checked on the website and noticed a post in the guestbook that someone had left, saying they had Pudsey our little bear and they wanted $500 for its safe return, thinking it was a joke we checked Robs bike and sure enough it had gone, we have not heard again from Brant & Jay but we hope that Pudsey is OK. Right enough of the silly stuff today we were going to head towards San Francisco or close to it, but we probably would not make it all the way, we wanted to see more of Pismo Beach so we drove to the main part of town and had a walk around and a quick look around and took a few photos, then we were back on our bikes and heading North on US1 we had mixed thoughts about the US1 at this point because there was too many 4 way stop signs through large sections so we jumped on the 101 this was much quicker and although less scenic, it was certainly a quicker option, we stopped for lunch in the “Wild Horse Cafe” which was a typical truck stop right on the 101. We got back onto the US1 as this was much better and rode this until we saw a sign stating that the US1 was closed in 48 miles, not sure what to do we pulled off in a lovely town called Cambria for a coffee, it was just as well we did this because we talked to a local guy and he said that we needed to turn back about 6 miles and cut across to the 101 again. The reason was because of a land slide, the really bad thing was, if we had ridden all the way up to the road block there was no diversions and we would have had to come all the way back, it was also a real shame as this section of the US1 was the most scenic through Big Sur, we were disappointed but glad we stopped and avoided a waste of time. The road over to the 101 was lovely US46 East it took us through some real wine country and there were plenty of vineyards and large ranches, so it was not long before we were back on the 101 and heading towards Monterey. We got in town and found a Best Western to check into and was told about a cool bar in town which was a 10 minute walk away called “Mucky Duck”, it was really busy and they had a great outside section we stayed for a few rounds and then walked further up the road to an Italian Restaurant for diner, which was really nice. After this it was back to the “Mucky Duck” were we stayed until we were kicked out, were we were greeted with 4 Police cars and officers all over the place, it seems that take the closing times here seriously, we had a laugh with some of the officers and even asked if we could handcuff Rory, they were really cool but didn’t let us do that, but they took a cool photo.
Vince, Brian, Ken and Stuart had left earlier and missed that which was a shame.