Corte Madera to Half Moon Bay

Captions from the top: Scary bike renters that need to brush up on bike skills, Alcatraz island from the bridge, These bridge towers are really cool and so tall, looking down the bridge, view from the very start of the bridge, Dani likes bridges, coming up the hill to the bridge.

Corte Madera to Half Moon Bay, Ca
11/16/09
Day 31 48 Miles


Today we woke up for our last morning at the condo in Larkspur. We had such a nice stay here it was a little hard to leave the comforts of a home. Eventually the notion of adventure motivated us to get going. We cooked up a great breakfast of toasted bagels with egg, roasted tomatoes and topped with goat chevre cheese from a nearby dairy. Yummy. We hit the road a little late, but it allowed the sun to come up and warm everything up around the bay area. It took a long time to get through the cities, across the bridge. Going across the bridge by day was very nice, hilarious, and a bit scary. The sidewalk across the bridge was flooded with tourists on rental bicycles. They were comical to watch. Many of them were having a hard time just riding their bikes. They had no idea how to go in a straight line or ride without swerving. We were almost taken out by a few of these bike renters. By the time we got to the other side of the bridge we were ready to be off of it just to get away from all the bike renters.

We rode through San Francisco one last time and came to the beach along hwy 1. It was absolutely beautiful. Nice tan colored sand shimmering in sun and surfers lined up all along the breaking waves. It is easy to see sometimes why so many people live in California, especially along the coast. We continued riding South and came to a city called Pacifica. The beach here was amazing. Nice deep blue water in a somewhat protected cove, but the waves were still big enough for tons of surfers. There was a Taco Bell on the beach that has a walk up window on the sand for the surfers. I remember seeing it on the travel channel once. Weird. After this we went over a pretty big climb called Devils Slide. Eric told us that this place is notorious for mudslides, so there are now building a tunnel through the hill side.

We made great time and cruised into Half Moon Bay around 4:00. We found a nice state beach campground with hiker/biker sites for $7. We found a cool little grocery store that had some great produce. We got some veggies for our rice and curry dish for supper, but I was most excited about the egg nog. We got some egg nog from Straus dairy, an organic dairy in California at this store. It was amazingly good, and I really like egg nog, so it was a great treat.

By the time we got supper made the humidity was so high that our tent was completely soaked. So soaked that we could shake water off of it. We both miss the land of low humidity quite a bit.

Greg