Ventura Highway

Day 26 • March 27, 2012 • El Capitan State Beach to Ventura •  50 miles

It’s good to know that given the right conditions we can achieve a 50-miler.   This was a pretty easy day with decent tail winds and flat terrain.  Our intended destination was McGrath State Park in Ventura but repeated rumors of its closure had us worried even though the recorded message from the state park phone line cheerfully gave directions to the park with no mention of it being closed.  The final straw was when we ducked into the Ventura RV Resort for an emergency potty break and were told once again that McGrath was closed.  Sales pitch or friendly advice?  We’d know for sure tomorrow when we passed McGrath but we decided to heed the warnings and stay at the RV park.

The RV park was a mixed bag.  The big bonus was the hot tub that Zoe and I took full advantage of.  The place was locked down tight with 24 hour security and key code access to everything which I guess is good but also a little unsettling.  They had free Wi-Fi that worked reasonably well.  We occupied a car camp site within a few feet of the Ventura Freeway.  By morning Zoe and I were getting unusually irritated with each other which we finally attributed to the fact that we’d been shouting at each other to be heard over the noise of the traffic.  I don’t  know if this is the highway referred to in the song but it’s not nearly as romantic in person.

I’d been noticing some unusual wear on my left front tire and finally tracked it down (I hope)to a loose headset. On the way out of town the next morning we stopped by the Ventura Bike Depot which was just a couple blocks down the road.  They quickly tightened both headsets and we were on our way. 

We got an email from Cap’n Rob today confirming our invitation to stay on the Irving Johnson when we reached San Pedro.  He also invited us to join some local girls scouts on a day sail planned for Saturday.  Zoe is even a girl scout, things were coming together.  Rob sent the following picture, how cool is that?  We were getting pretty excited.