Getting Around: Grover Beach, CA

So I don’t talk too much trash on Grover Beach (as I did have a good time), I’ll start off by mentioning the gorgeous beachfront path. It seemed fairly new, made of wood, elevated above the brush, and was a joy to walk.

The path took me from a nice fish and chips lunch at the edge of Grover Beach, all the way past a golf course and several RV resorts, to downtown Pismo Beach.

The wooden path ended at a dirt path with a coyote warning.

Hold that thought.

Pismo was cute, the pier was lovely, the weather was divine. But it also felt like a bit of a tourist trap.

I wanted to take the bus back from Pismo Beach to my hotel in Grover Beach. I looked up the route map.

There was very little bus service to begin with. The next bus would, in theory, arrive in about a half hour. I didn’t particularly trust it.

It was about a 40 minute walk. So I figured I’d start to walk, and hop on the bus if/when it came by.

What the apps didn’t tell me was that the buses were rerouted, over a mile out of the way. I found out thanks to a laminated sheet of paper zip tied and taped to a bus stop several RV parks into my walk.

I tried the bus arrival information SMS text line. It gave me perfectly cryptic information. Anyways, the bus wasn’t coming.

A maps app (I forget if it was Transit, Google, or Apple) routed me down PCH, aka Dolliver St.

Pedestrian crossing signage and several bus stops suggested that pedestrians were indeed welcome there.

However, the complete lack of sidewalk begged to differ. I was walking alongside a highway.

There was a bike lane painted onto the asphalt, and I suppose they intended pedestrians to share it. Or perhaps they didn’t intend anything at all. Hard to say.

One particular pedestrian crossing, with a bright yellow sign, took you from one side of the road with only a few feet of sidewalk, to no sidewalk on the other.

I did meet the remains of what appeared to be one of the aforementioned coyotes.