Guillaume Dutilh Photography: Easter weekend camping and road trip

Every now and then the question arises: “what to do with a 3 day weekend?”

What better idea than a camping trip to Big Sur’s Kirk Creek campground? Well, that’s until the weather turns into a rain deluge which would really tamper the experience.

What better idea than a camping trip to El Capitan State Beach campground.

El Capitan State Beach

Not quite as glamorous but still pretty awesome! At least the weather forecast was more enticing.

Being quite closer than Big Sur I decided to grab an adventure motorcycle and make it a whole day ride and maaan was that a good idea. Instead of waking up at 4am to catch a pretty sunrise with my camera, I woke up at 4am to catch a pretty sunset with my motorcycle. I’ll selfishly keep that glorious memory to myself as I was too busy carving corners than stopping for pictures.

Now, that doesn’t mean I never stopped to snap a few things. My back was being mistreated by a pretty darn heavy camera bag after all so I was better off taking breaks and pulling some of the gear out. But it was always a challenge choosing between riding the twisties (the corners, not the chips) and firing the shutter. I also had a whole bunch of GoPro mounts covering the bike to record videos of the ride. I’ll probably make a montage though I have to be honest, you guys will probably get headaches from the continuous vibrations.

So here’s the ride I did (yep, on Google Treasure style map… it fits the feeling):

My treasured motorcycle ride

The sun broke through the clouds just around Lake Casitas. I didn’t stop to capture it and just kept riding instead. Around Santa Barbara I decided to go up the mountain ridge on the small Gibraltar Rd. I had gone up there last summer to go hike Forbush Flats and promised myself I’d come back with a motorcycle. Santa Barbara was overcast and drizzling but once I pierced through the clouds, the views were breathtaking. From there on the rest of the ride on this twisty road was above a sea of clouds which made the experience pretty unique.

Riding above the clouds

I kept scrapping the footpegs of the motorcycle (nah… I really only did it once) until I hit the 154 highway then cruised around Lake Cachuma.

From there I went to Solvang where I made a much shorter stop than anticipated. The Danish influenced village looked like it’d be awesome to visit until the swarm of shutter-happy-tourists started continuously asking me to take pictures of them. They even wanted to climb on my bike for their personal souvenir picture of the American-dream experience. Needless to say I was out of there pretty quickly.

Solvang colors

After cleaning up the flies off my bike and barely escaping from this tourist trap I headed towards the 1 taking Santa Rosa Rd. Ahhhh, much better scenery here. Santa Rosa Rd is a very nice drive through the local wineries.

I then turned onto the 14 miles pleasing road that dead ends at Jalama Beach. This is where I would pause and eat their famous burger that carries the same name. The ride through the mustard covered hillsides was just pure pleasure and the greasy-meaty reward was up to its reputation.

Scenery when you look away from the Jalama beach

The way out of there was even more pleasing since you don’t have a choice but to take that same beautiful 14 miles road but I got to ride it with a now satiated stomach.

The rest of the ride was just getting back on the 1 and heading to the campground. There I met up with the rest of my friends who were kind enough to carry most of my camping gear in their car. By the way, Sam and Maria rock the teardrop!

Sam’s to go

The rest of the day consisted mainly of resting after the 240 (s)miles ride and eating Sam’s delicious freshly cooked chicken stew around the campfire.

The next day, we headed out to the top of Refugio Rd and started hiking down the other side of the mountain. Having never ridden on dirt especially with a 600lb motorcycle; my friends, my bad hair and I just parked up there and started walking down.

The hiking-soon-to-feel-wimpy-group

It was a good opportunity to use the new extension tubes and do a little bit of macro work.

Fine prints available

Gigantic bug climbing a humongous mountain

Some bug climbing up roots

Now the common scenery on this little dirt road, besides Gabe climbing roots Indiana Jones style was composed dirt bikes and other off-road vehicles.

The “right” way to hike that trail

That was until we were surprised by this pristine pure white Toyota Prius with this older guy claiming he had no idea how he got all the way up there and was just breaking in his two months old car. Way to make me feel like a wimp deciding not to ride my adventure bike down a simple dirt road a hybrid city car could handle…

Off-roading zero emission style

Oh well, I got my revenge against self-wimpy-consciousness on the way down where I braved gravity for a few inches.

It’s a bird

After we got back to our campsite, we decided to take a little walk on the beach to throw a couple Frisbees and enjoy the sunset. Until now the light for photography had been pretty flat the whole time (yeah, I’m using the same excuse I used with my Vasquez Rocks hike). It was now time to take some decent sunset shots. Since I’ve been gibbering quite a bit I’ll just let the following few pictures take care of the concluding this story.

Enjoy