Pacific Coast Bike Tour

The "LA to LA" ride: Los Altos to Los Angeles.

Day 3 · Monday, September 7

Monterey → King City

Distance
68.9mi110.9km
Elevation gain
1946ft593m
Elevation loss
1866ft569m
Max elevation
492ft150m
Monterey → King City Switch basemap (elevation / vegetation / plain) top-right; click any point for Google Maps, Apple Maps or Street View.
Download GPX — Day 3 Open in Ride with GPS

Google Maps Apple Maps Neither opens this route — they take only a start and an end over a link, so each draws its own way between Monterey and King City. Use them for the lie of the land; the GPX and Ride with GPS have the line we ride.

The day at a glance

Leaves Monterey across the old Fort Ord ground at Marina and East Garrison, then turns down the Salinas Valley — the ground that gets called America's Salad Bowl, with lettuce, broccoli, spinach and celery, a large share of the national crop, grown in long flat blocks between the two ranges. River Road runs along the foot of the Santa Lucia Highlands AVA, the bench above Soledad and Greenfield planted mostly to pinot noir and chardonnay.

Worth looking up for

  • The flattest of the inland days — 65.5 mi with only 1,717 ft of climbing.
  • Runs the west side of the Salinas Valley on River Road, under the Santa Lucia Highlands bench, and stays out of Salinas itself.
  • Greenfield sits 1.5 mi off the route at mi 53 — the one town of any size between Monterey and King City.

What to watch for

  • Stops on this day are listed out to 1.5 mi off the road rather than the quarter mile used elsewhere, and only where they can be reached without crossing US-101 - the towns sit east of the freeway, River Road runs west of it. Even so the middle of the day is thin: 23.6 mi with nothing at all between El Valle Market at mi 18.5 and the Mission at Soledad at mi 42.1, and 40.9 mi between water points. This is a SAG day; carry between meets.
  • Effectively unshaded — a valley floor with the sun on it all afternoon, and almost no mapped tree cover along the road.
  • Barely a climb on it: one pitch of 0.68 mi at 4.3% around mi 37, and a high point of 492 ft. Nobody has checked the shoulder or the traffic on River Road — worth asking someone who has ridden it.

Towns along the way

  1. 1 Monterey
  2. 5 Sand City
  3. 13 East Garrison
  4. 17 Creekside
  5. 45 Fort Romie 0.9 mi off
  6. 53 Greenfield 1.5 mi off
  7. 65 King City 1.0 mi off

Stops along the way

Mapped in OpenStreetMap and carried in the GPX as waypoints, so they show on a head unit too. Distances are miles from the start. Tap a name for Google Maps, or the arrow for Apple Maps. Not verified on the ground — opening hours and whether a tap actually runs are anyone’s guess. Water and restrooms are not listed here, because they are long lists you find on the road rather than plan around — but they are in the GPX, so a head unit still shows them. A marks a stop somebody picked by hand and vouched for, rather than one the OpenStreetMap query happened to return. Everything else here is within a quarter mile of the line; the few that are further say how far.

Shops & markets 5

Food & drink 5

Worth a look 7

Restaurants in King City

Places to eat at the end of the day, gathered by hand rather than from OpenStreetMap, so these are not the same as the stops above and are not in the GPX. Most are a short walk from the hotel; where one is not, the address says so. Nobody has eaten at them. Opening hours are deliberately not listed — they change, and a stale hour on a page is worse than none — so tap through before you set out. A name with no link had none to hand.