Originally Posted by el twe
I'm thinking about a bike tour of Central/Southern CA (San Francisco area to San Diego). I'm not sure about where to stay, though. Do you prefer camping, hostels, or hotels? Why?
I prefer camping to hotels and hotels to hostels.
I don't know what it is about hostels in particular that I don't like. I think they smell a bit too much like airplanes - kind of a musty, unkept smell. Hard to put it into words.
Hotels are okay especially if it's going to dump buckets of rain. Nothing worse than packing a wet tent and carrying it around all day only to unpack a wet tent and sleep in it at night. Plus it's nice to get a shower and see what's happening in the world once in a while.
Camping is still the best. Outside, fresh air ... all that stuff. I tend to try and stay in orgainized campground with showers if I can. I tend to get more saddle sores if I don't get the salt off me on a regular basis. I did find during a tour of the Midwest in 2003 that most of the state parks in Missouri and Iowa have showers. In Colorado most of them don't even have water! It was ever so civilized.
Stuart Black