The Long Way Home, Part 1

In an effort to explore more of beautiful California, we took the long way home (well, one of them), and drove north from Monterey on 101.  This took us directly through San Francisco, where we learned that for a short time in the city 101 takes you onto the street level, and we made it through unscathed - bikes on the rack and all.

We drove across the Golden Gate bridge, stopped on the Sausalito side and parked with the other hundreds of tourists.  But we also had our bikes.  So we took them off the rack and endeavored to ride them across the bridge.

Even under normal circumstances when the bike path on one side of the bridge and the pedestrian path on the other side are both open, I understand this can be a bit of a rough ride, what with winds and wobblers on rented bikes.  But on the busy weekend day we were there, the bike path side was closed and bikes were rerouted so that we shared the pedestrian path, so we had to maneuver around oblivious tourists going both directions, as well as the bike rental wobblers (in groups and on their own).

Once we got the hang of it a bit, it was exhilarating.  I learned that I just had to be less nice - don't give people as much room as they were taking, be loud and let people know we were coming, and don't give up the right of way or I'd end up going the speed of the slowest walker.  Once I got the hang of that I was able to enjoy the gorgeous day.

After leaving the Golden Gate bridge, we headed further north on 101 through the Redwoods.  We stayed overnight in Eureka, which turned out to be a charming little former lumber port that looked a lot more like Oregon and California port towns than the fancier California ones we'd visited further south.  We ate that night at the Samoa Cookhouse, which was ah-mazing.  The food there is served like it was in the lumber days - one meal served family style on long tables to everyone who's there.  I felt like after our day on the bridge and driving through the Redwoods, we'd earned that meal.

Riding through Monterey

A couple days into our trip to Monterey, we decided to ride the bike path in Monterey and along the coast.  The Monterey Bay Coastal Bike Trail follows the coastline for almost 30 miles of the bay.  In the city, the trail is a wide paved path that cuts through town just a block and a half off of Cannery Row.  We parked south of the aquarium, then rode north through town to the working jetty, and out on the jetty to watch birds and harbor seals.

After riding to the end of the jetty, we rode back through town, but instead of following the bike path, we turned toward Cannery Row.  While it was really crowded in town that weekend, there were surprisingly few cars on the roads along Cannery Row -- maybe because there's so little parking, it's just not car friendly.  So there were a couple cars, motorcycles, lots of pedestrians and us.  It felt like we ruled the road.

On Cannery Row, we stopped to look around a bit.  We found a cinnamon roll shop, a nice pier area, and lots of fantastic people watching.  The tourists in Monterey were much more international than we're used to - we heard European and Asian languages, along with our own familiar English.

From Cannery Row, we headed south along the coast and quickly left the tourist area for a road with the ocean on the right and houses on the left.  I looked at other people's houses and decided which I'd have liked for myself, which I couldn't imagine ever wanting, and which were probably owned by lucky souls who bought them 50 years ago and hadn't done much to fix them up since then but oh how fun it would be to do that now.  Along the way, the coastline was distractingly beautiful.  I kept an eye out for otters, which we didn't see, but I did see seals relaxing on the rocks.

At this point, the bike path was on the road, which wasn't a big deal because everyone drove so slow to enjoy the coastal view.  Only the tour buses startled me as they drove by because they're so big that you can feel them blow by.  We rode all the way down to Asilomar State Park, stopping along the way to look for otters and enjoy the view.  On our way back, we were joined by some motorcycles for a while, and it felt for a second like I was keeping up.

I loved that Monterey was so bike-friendly and made the trip toting our bikes all the way down from Washington totally worth it.  It's the kind of place that's meant to be explored on bicycle -- there's so much to see that you don't want to go too fast or you'll miss it.

Back to California

I moved to California at the formative age of 10 and left when I was 15.  I don't really miss it, though -- I'm a true Washingtonian at heart.  But my mom lives there, so I fly back to visit her periodically.  This summer, my mom invited J and I to join her at a vacation house on the waterfront near Monterey.  I have fond memories of this part of the California coast from our vacations there when I was a kid, and it was an easy sell to J.  We decided early on that we'd make this our first long-distance road trip together, and when we got our bikes back in the spring, we immediately started planning to take them on this trip with us.  I'm so glad that we did.

Mount Shasta

Our drive south with the bikes was perilous in large part because we had our bikes, plus the required hitch and rack, on our already relatively low clearance Camry.  As a result, we dragged on the ground almost every time we left a gas station, so much that we started selecting gas stations based on which were least likely to make us cringe at the awful sound of the car dragging on concrete.  Plus, I-5 in Oregon and California is an absolute wreck.  When we weren't hitting potholes (!) in the freeway, we were slowing and swerving to avoid degraded asphalt that would rattle a luxury car, let alone our weighed down sedan.  Nevertheless, we made it to Monterey in about 15 hours with our rack and bikes in great condition (thanks to Swagman for such a kickass rack!).

We set out to go bike riding on our second full day in Monterey.  In these difficult economic times, many states (including my own) have imposed use fees in their state parks.  California is one of those states.  Fortunately, we took our bicycles with us California's Point Lobos State Park.  We parked on the far side of Highway 1, crossed the road, then rode into the park entrance about a quarter mile down the road.

We were able to access all of the viewpoints others arrived at by car, except we didn't pay the $10 entrance fee.  Even better, at the most popular viewpoint there was a bike rack near where the park docents were standing, so we felt our bikes were safe when we left them locked there (and were happy they warned us about poison oak in the bushes next to the rack).  We got off our bikes and explored the cypress tree groves overlooking the coastline, then walked out to the tip of the coastline for a view of birds and sea lions as they sunned themselves below us.

When we left Point Lobos, we had to cross Highway 1 to reach our car.  The cars, motorcycles and RVs zoomed around the bend so fast that I worried I wouldn't be able to get across fast enough on my bike.  But I had a big enough gap that I hopped on and sprinted across.  I then had to pedal just a quarter mile to get to the car, but I've never felt so vulnerable to motorists than I did then.  I had an inkling of how an insect trying to avoid being splatted on a windshield might feel.  Nevertheless, I made it to our car, and got a couple beeps from motorcyclists along the way (yay two-wheelers!).  

We finished our day out with a little more road tripping down south on Highway 1 to Big Sur, and while we didn't have time to bike around, we did see a number of intrepid cyclists tackling the hills, traffic and narrow roads.  With that said, this is one strikingly gorgeous stretch of road that I think I'll stick with driving on.

Cape Disappointment does not disappoint

During the week of July 4th, we took our bikes with us on a camping trip to Cape Disappointment State Park, which is located near Long Beach, WA.  We were camping with family friends, who were very impressed by our new bikes and had brought their own, so we all went out for a ride around the park along its long 20 mph roads through the trees and out to the the end of the road by the jetty - from which you can see one of the two lighthouses at the park.

We had noticed a paved path when we entered the campground, learned from a Ranger that it was part of the Coastal Trail, which is a six mile paved path that goes from the park through the city of Long Beach, and that most of it follows the coastline.  Skipping the super steep part that was in the park, we started where the path heads to the coast.  First went through some rock formations, then cut through the beach grass for a few miles before we reached town.

In town, we locked up all of our bikes together - a feat in itself because we had three adult bikes, a teen's bike, and a kid's bike, but only one cable lock.  With some ingenuity, we were able to accomplish the task, and the bikes looked awesome all tangled up together.

On our way back to the park, we took our time to explore a bit so we could look for a beach access road that would allow a car to drive onto the beach in the area we were riding along.  We found what we were looking for.

As we waited for our ride to pick us up with our bikes, we explored some of the other trails, which started with a pretty bridge, then quickly headed up a steep path that probably only an experienced mountain biker could get up (although I got further up it than either of the other guys who tried!).

We later returned by car to fly kites at the beach we'd found access to during our bike ride.

We may not have ridden the longest of rides while on this camping trip, but we loved the freedom that having our bikes with us afforded us.