DAY 17 - SAN MIGUEL, BRADLEY, SAN ARDO & SAN LUCAS

LOCATION UPDATE: Tomorrow we'll be walking through King City and Greenfield.

DAY 17: We knew we were approaching some difficult terrain after leaving Paso Robles. We contacted the CHP, we talked to someone at Camp Roberts, and we had someone scout the area for us. The end result was that we walked through each of the towns between Paso Robles and King City, but were unable to walk in between these towns on the 101 - the only directly accessible route. It was this day that we felt most regretful that we didn't have more time to plan (we only had 10 days!). But we felt good about being able to make our presence known in these very desolate and isolated towns.



First, there was San Miguel. We walked quite a stretch of developed area before reaching the mission. We saw only 2 people in town and several others working in auto shops leading into San Miguel.

Next was Bradley, population of 120. When we pulled off of the freeway and saw the city limits sign, we were greeted by Cujo. After we got past him, we decided to try and walk down the main stretch but were intimidated by the truck that drove vvvvvvveeeeeeeerrrrrrrryyyyyyyy

slowly past us and through town and another truck that just sat in the middle of the street staring. Valerie gave a hesitant "Peace" sign to anyone watching.

Our third stop was San Ardo. This cute sign was in front of the Elementary School. The town seemed friendly but not that interested in our presence. We were mostly ignored. Oh, and by the way, no one up to this point has asked to sign our petition or to do a video clip. . . or even talked to us.

Our last stop of the day was San Lucas. This was kind of funny.... if you look closely at the signs in the first picture, you can see that Main Street has No Outlet! The short walk down main street, took us past the town's library. There were a few groups of unfriendly, staring men as we reached the end of main street.

Our evening ended at a working ranch 20 miles outside of San Miguel. We stayed with Bart and Tony, who often open their home for retreats. Bart is an avid history buff and Tony painted most (if not all) of the pictures in their house. They treated us to a beautiful soak in the jacuzzi, a warm fire, wonderful meal, and opportunity to rest and recuperate.