Wednesday, 8/5 - 59 miles. Today we had only a few hills. A lot of the riding took us by large range areas where cattle grazed. We also saw more horse farms and several beach resort towns. In the afternoon we passed through farm country. We passed some strawberry fields that seemed to go on forever. It must have been quitting time because farm workers were streaming out of the fields and traffic was bumper to bumper. It is amazing to think that each strawberry was picked by hand. We also passed a large number of squatter camps which looked like small communities of homeless people located behind bushes 10 or 15 yards from the road. We have also found a few homeless people in the hiker/biker campsites over the past few weeks. The state park rangers in the last few campgrounds have been very diligent in checking who is staying in the hiker/biker campsites. You are limited with regard to the number of nights you can camp in the hiker/biker sites so the rangers seem to been checking that homeless people don't stay too long. We camped last night with Tim from Philadelphia who we have ridden and camped with off and on. He rode with us for part of today but he had arranged for a "Warm Showers" host to put him up tonight so we parted after a late morning break. It is possible we will see him at the campground tomorrow night. We are again in an area where both motels and campgrounds are not located in the right places to accommodate a full day of riding so we went off the route to Santa Maria to find a motel. Tomorrow and the next day the route takes us inland over some large climbs. Those should be the last major climbs for the trip.
