Day Two: Wheeler Gorge - New Cuyama

Slater and I woke up around 8:30, which means we got a lovely 12 hours of sleep. Slate spent about an hour on his morning trip to the bathroom, and then a couple of Clif Bars later, we were back on the road. We learned early on while leaving the campsite that we were about to encounter a 5,000 ft. elevation gain, and let me just tell you, we were ecstatic! I hope you’re becoming familiar with my sarcasm. With only wasabi almonds, a Clif Bar, and two water bottles remaining, we each spent the day rationing. The first few miles had us fairly confident, yelling cheesy things at each other like, “We’re really f’in doin’ it!” and singing the happy birthday song aloud since it was Slate’s puppy’s first birthday. But that confidence soon came to a crashing hault, as per usual, when we realized we had only gained 1,000 feet over 4 long miles.

We pushed through and came across a huge climbing wall tucked into the mountains and saw two cars and a motorcycle pulled aside, along with a rider who we recognized from earlier in the day as the man who threw us a huge thumbs up as he sped by. We ended up chatting with our new friend, Richard, for nearly 20 minutes and he told us all about the scenery around us: the climbing wall is called Sespe Wall, and it is frequently climbed by Patagonia’s employees (Patagonia is headquartered in Ventura, CA). The river running below it is called the Sespe River, and it is a place where he used to go fishing with his father when he was younger. Richard told us of many bike tours he had done in the past, many of which passed through the highway that we were on—and with that, he shared with us his knowledge of the road ahead, and of a restaurant (thank God) not too far away.

After pushing through ten more miles, we found ourselves waving down a car for a couple bottles of water, and we met a woman who was really more concerned about whether she had made a wrong turn than our suffering bodies. She also parked her car in the middle of a two-lane, 70 mph highway, and almost got hit by a truck pulling a livestock trailer. That being said, she was a wonderful woman to provide us with a little H2O.

From there, we started to struggle. A lot. And by “we”, I mainly mean me, Carolyn. Something about the altitude and a little out-of-shapeness had me quite dizzy. After hitting what we believed to be the summit, then realizing we had about 1,000 feet still to gain, we stopped alongside the road to flag down any truck that would come in our path. And just like that, the world’s most lovely human, Jeff, pulled aside. His truck conveniently had two open seats, an empty bed, and two spare water bottles. We hopped in and enjoyed stories of his hiking and cycling adventures, plus some chilly A.C. Jeff works as a salesman for a pipe inspection company, but his passions revolve around the outdoors—after all, Slater spotted a few climbing packs and surfing booties in the back seat. He informed us that despite our uneasiness about hitchhiking, we didn’t seem too threatening. Damn. We drove to the summit, which didn’t turn out to be as far as we thought…. but the trip downhill was a hell of a lot worse (it’s called a downhill, not an upanddownhill--c’mon, give us a break). Looking out from the top looked exactly like the badlands, and both of us were so in awe that we somehow forgot to take a picture. We shared the same thought as Jeff: “There are millions of people in California, and yet none of them live here.” It was pretty damn empty.

We descended upon miles of farmland, and Jeff dropped us off at the only stop nearby: a 480 acre pistachio farm called Santa Barbara Pistachio Company, with a small storefront manned by a wonderful guy named Art. We bought $30 worth of snacks and some DANK chicken burritos, authentic Mexican food at its finest. We headed outside to munch, where we were joined by the farm’s mascot, a trusty old Yellow Labrador named Jack, who had extremely large “man parts” and the nerve to drool all over our food. He’s cute though, so we let him. We munched and deliberated our next move, given that the closest city was 15 miles away. We asked Art if he knew of any place where we could pitch a tent, and he quickly called the farm owner’s son, who lives adjacent to the store. Just like that, we ended up amongst the pistachio trees with Jack, some kittens, fire ants, and even a coyote. Cheers.

Photos soon to come--that is, as soon as our connection is strong enough to upload them!