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.

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.