Emma Wood State Beach

Since we had a short day yesterday we had to make up for some lost time so it ended up being approximetly 50 miles or so and we had to navigate Santa Barbara.  The terrain was in our favor though, just a few small hills to climb over with nice flats in between.  While in Santa Barbara we went to Stearns Wharf and said good-bye to George as he was off to find the local hostel.  Here Bryan and Maggie shared some fish and chips and we set off to find a McDonalds.  We found out previously that you can get shareable meals which can consist of 20 or 40 nuggets at 5 or 9 bucks.  Thinking this was a great idea we got 40 nuggets; 20 each.  To make the meal a little better we added a banana (and ate it in the mcdonalds!). We thought that Maggie and Bryan would meet up with us to help eat the nuggets but they didn't find us in time.  We set out again and once we made it back to the main road lo and behold, there they are.  Uncanny. We continued on out of the city and made excellent time on the flat freeway with a bike lane.

Stearns Wharf

We arrived at Emma Wood but were told to go an extra mile or two to the campground as the first stop was just a 'point of interest.' The guy said we could follow the bike path but warned against a set of railway tracks that we would have to haul our bikes over.  We decided that wasen't so bad or at least better than going up the hill so we set out again. At the end of the first path, we picked up our bikes over the tracks only to encounter an almost vertical mountian bike path up to the next path.  Knowing we didn't want to backtrack to the road we started hauling. Nothing like trying to push 80lbs 4 times up a hill.  The boys did most the work as I was having enough trouble getting mine over the tracks.
Finally we ended up at the campground, paid a mere $10 for us all as there was no one around and no real description given for what the $10 was supposed to cover, and set up camp under the trees.  It was good we didn't pay much as it wasn't that nice.  Hard dirt ground, no showers or hot water and toilets that were one step up from an outhouse. But it was a place to pitch a tent at least.