I didn't sleep much at all, but it was a wonderful experience. A hiker-biker campground is about 13 miles from my home, part of a common route I use to go into Monterey, only this time I was pulling a trailer with camping equipment, and I had to make a mile and a half of uphill that got rather steep in places. Fortunately it was a very short climb, and I made it up there in good shape.
Everything else went very well, other than the mattress being too bulky yet not supportive enough for my creaky bones, so I was in a bit of pain and listened to music on my iPod and heard other bikers coming in late.
It was also a great experience to meet other cycling tourists who were on much longer journeys, a lot of them were going down the length of the Pacific coast from Canada to Mexico.
One older couple who had come from Scotland to make the trip had a mishap that laid them up at the campsite for over a week. They couldn't pedal their tandem until they healed so they had to resort to taking the bus to do their shopping around, and to look for a good bike shop to replace their lowest front gear with a smaller one. I wish I could have helped them but my car wasn't running at the time, otherwise when I went home I would have driven back up there and offered to take them around to where they needed to go. That is the downside of traveling by bicycle I suppose, but they took it in stride.
On the way home I stopped at REI and got another mattress, a Thermarest NeoAir Trekker. another bike tourist came in right after I did and we both bought the same mattress when he said he had a similar experience as I did the night before. He was going on an ultralight camping tour without racks on his mountain bike.
When I tried the mattress out at home, it was so comfortable I fell immediately asleep for a few hours. LOL
On the way home, a stop at Del Monte Beach.
Campsite.
