Beaming in at Oceano and 'Marking' time

Reporting back for duty after a week in the Alps........Firstly, many thanks to 'guest presenter' Alan Parkinson who has geo blogged so enthusiastically in my absence and has written a fascinating account of the second part of the New Zealand leg and the first part of the USA leg. When I last geo blogged, Mark was in South Island NZ - today he's cycling down the Californian coast not far from Santa Barbara . That's an amazing change of environment in just 9 days. In the interim , I've been to the Alps and back and today, I'm picking up Mark's trail at Oceano where he overnighted yesterday. I feel slightly jet-lagged!

The aerial view of Oceano shows the feature with which the town is most associated - an extensive dune system to the south of the town....

The extent of the dunes is emphasised in the Google maps view. The dunes are a state park but are unique in the USA in being the only state coastal park where vehicles can be driven onto the beach and through the dunes. It is officially a 'State Vehicular Recreation Area' (SVRA)! With dunes as beautiful as the image below shows, there will almost certainly be a few conservation v recreation issues ..

There is lots of video footage of 'vehicular recreation' on the Oceano dunes available on You Tube if you find boy racers on quad bikes interesting!

Local time for Mark is now 8 hours behind GMT and so he has not yet finished his day's route when those of us on this side of the Atlantic are heading to bed. What I therefore intend to do for this leg of the journey is to write up each day's route the following day... starting tomorrow.