We slept to the sounds of the waves crashing on the shore,
and awoke to a beautiful sunrise.
The first stop of the day was Mission Buenaventura, in
Ventura. This is an active church and Catholic
school, but we were able to tour the very small museum, the courtyard (which
was beautifully landscaped), the chapel (which was rather dark), and some original
church ruins and burial site behind the chapel.
The staff was very friendly, and even let us park our bikes in the staff
room behind the gift shop for security.
The city has grown up around the mission complex, so there was
not much of the old mission to see apart from the chapel. The park across the street, called the
Mission gardens, contained a fig planted by the padres, and we were told that
there were some ruins in the basement of the store across the street, and also
a quarter mile away in another park, but these were not part of the current
mission grounds.
Before we left, we purchased a medallion of Saint
Christopher, patron saint of travelers, for each of us cyclists. We will be biking through L.A. traffic for
the next few days, and can use all the security we can get!
We biked to the marina for lunch, where there was a little
shopping center with several restaurants to choose from. We ended up at 805 Bar and Grilled Cheese
(get it? Like a bar and grill). They had a short but sweet menu of gourmet grilled
cheese sandwiches. Their bar menu was
many times longer than their food menu.
We each ordered a different grilled cheese, and they were all
excellent. Mine was a Caprese, with
tomatoes, mozzarella, and pesto on rustic olive bread, with a side of Tomato
Bisque soup (which was vegetarian!). I
would even go so far as to say it was spectacular. The service was slow (although we ordered and
the food arrived quickly once we were seated), but that’s because we were
waited on by the owner and chef himself, who was also trying to cook, host, and
manage his busboys all at once, and his friendliness made up for the few delays.
We followed up lunch with some ice cream from a shop across
the way from the 805. Yum!
Feeling full and content, we continued down the road. We took a wrong turn in Oxnard, at a poorly
marked intersection, but luckily our sag wagon (Mom) realized we had gone the
wrong way and called us before we got very far off track. Today’s route took us through a lot of agricultural
fields, mostly strawberries and some other crop I couldn’t identify from the
side of the road (maybe carrots? Or parsley?).
I was surprised how much farm land there still is on the outskirts of
the L.A. basin.
We hitched a ride on the sag wagon once we reached the
Thousand Oaks area where the road became steep, so that we could get to
Paramount Ranch before it closed for the evening. I love old western films, and so I have been
looking forward to visiting this park. It
is a permanent movie set of an old west town, complete with saloon, bank,
general store, jail, sheriff’s office, houses, hotel, barber shop, assay
office, and train station (sans train tracks).
Across a tiny dry creek is a “miner’s cabin.” The buildings on the set are complete inside
and out, not just facades.
The campground tonight is at Malibu Creek State Park, which
is in the mountains above Malibu, but you can’t see the ocean from here. It’s actually a lot closer to Calabasas than
to Malibu. The campground is nearly
deserted; we’ve only seen three other campers so far. It’s pretty, and even though it’s only a few
miles from the city you can’t see or hear it because of its location in the
hills.
Today’s route: http://ridewithgps.com/routes/2874506
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