Pacific Coast Tour – Day 40 – 41; San Francisco to Sunset State Beach

Day: 40
August 26, 2021

Distance: 30 miles (1583 total)
San Francisco to Half Moon Bay

Today was a good day. We left San Francisco via the Golden Gate Park toward the coast. The park itself is mostly closed to cars so it wasn’t hard for us to get on the coastal highway. We had lovely views of the Pacific Ocean to our right and a not too busy highway to ride on.

We did have to ride through a lot of suburbs though. Daly City in particular stood out to us because A) it was a giant hill and B) all the houses were the same. Like eerily the same. Like box after box after box all up the hill with only minor differences. It felt dystopian especially at our super slow space inching up the hill. Sorry to anyone from Daly City…

We enjoyed a late second breakfast outside a Safeway before hitting the road and hopping on to our old friend Highway 1. Sadly this particular portion was super twisty with lots of blind corners, little to no shoulder, and of course up hill. We made it up the hill, but it was definitely one of the more sketchy roads we’ve been on this trip.

At the top of the hill was the Devil’s Slide recreation area. Which for us meant car free riding! It’s an old approximately one and a half mile long portion of the 1 that they couldn’t maintain for traffic, so they built a tunnel for cars to take today, and converted the wonderful scenic portion into a biking / walking path with information signs and benches. The view was so nice, and the traffic noise nonexistent that we took a rather long break just taking it all in (and eating, obviously).

South of the Devil’s Slide the shoulders got a little wider and traffic seemed to lighten up. We enjoyed the many beach views.

Outside El Granada we were able to pick up a bike path, and who should appear behind us? Shreya! We thought she’d be long gone since she left us with most of the others when we went to visit family, but she had breaked just long enough in San Francisco for us to be reunited. Road magic. We rode together to Half Moon Bay and got caught up. Once at the camp we spent a while deciding if we should go on since it was only around 1:00. The options ahead are limited. In the end Andrew and I opted to stay at Half Moon, and Shreya decided to chance her luck at the possibly full KOA another 20 plus miles south. But before she left we enjoyed a meal together at the campground. She was also kind enough to listen to our front hub and give us some of her bike mechanic advice that boiled down to “well it’s not really broken, grating, or crunching so it’s probably okay for now.”

After setting up our tent Andrew and I decided to go down to the beach (which was just off the campsite). It was finally warm enough to want to get in the water. The waves were a little intense for swimming, but we did venture out about knee deep in the surf. We watched the waves lap up and down for a while before heading back to our tent.

Once back at the campsite, another of our bike buddies showed up! This time it was Dan who we’ve stayed at several campsites with and had our Fort Bragg adventure with. We thought we’d lost all our buddies, and we got to see 2! (Most of the others we’ve met up with were ending their trips in San Francisco).

Disaster struck! In the dead of night (so like 9:30 pm) Andrew heard a rustling in the tent vestibule. Buh buh bum! Critters! We woke up two or three times shooing critters away, until finally we mustered up the energy to investigate.

For those that don’t know, our tent has a space between the tent and the rain fly referred to as the vestibule. That’s where we generally keep our bags so they’re away from weather and prying eyes. Most camps come with a “critter box” or food safe but in general we’ve only been using the boxes where there was a possibility of bears. (Some of the critter boxes are in serious need of replacement anyways and have clearly been conquered by the local critters.)

When Andrew turned our bag around we saw that something had managed to manipulate the top and get into it (this is what we get for trying to carry less stuff…. More stuff would have made it harder for the animal to open.) After seeing our pannier opened and a bag of pistachios on the ground with slashes through it Andrew grabbed our food and stomped off to go put it in the critter box. Upon leaving the tent he saw several raccoons scurry away and up the trees. Even after stowing the food away properly we were awoken several more times to the rustling of raccoons in hunt for more food.

Luckily they only got into our pistachios and rice bag, so not too much damage. But we will have to hit up a store before our next dinner.

Day: 41
August 27, 2021

Distance: 68 miles (1651 total)
Half Moon Bay to Sunset State Beach

Alright I think we got our mojo back. We got out of the campground around 8 am this morning even after dealing with the critter cleanup. We had a couple hills in the morning but so much of the day was flat. We were able to really get going (it also helped that the wind was finally on our side again!)

One of the bikers we met at the campground last night, Steve, caught up and rode with us for a little while. We ended up separating when Andrew decided it was time for second breakfast but Steve carried on.

Lots of pretty views but nothing really of note until the 50 mile mark when we got into Santa Cruz. By that point we were hot and low on water so we refilled our water bottles at a seven eleven and grabbed some “super drinks” aka sports drinks. We were hoping to find a nice park to break in, but the ACA route took us more through the city instead of along the beach fronts. And the en route riverfront park I thought would be nice based on Google maps was without shade and what areas did have shade had become home to several people. Instead we found a fancy bakery with shaded patio seating where we enjoyed a cold fruit tart and some sourdough. It was lovely.

We stopped at a grocery store to grab something to replace our rice for dinner and then carried on. Riding through Santa Cruz and surrounding was the most city riding the ACA route had taken us on this far. Most cities we’ve been able to skirt around the edge, but this one we were riding on a main street the entire way. Luckily there was a bike lane, but it annoyingly had a transition from asphalt to concrete right in the middle of it making the riding a little harder than it needed to be.

There was a moment of concern on the ride through the city as well when Andrew started hearing a new, much louder, mystery squeak rattle from the front hub. After we finally got off of the busy road and onto side streets we were able to actually focus on the noise and look at the bike while riding. Turns out it was just that one of the front panniers had bounced off the rail in a particularly rough section and was being held up with our cargo net elastic. So a quick fix and we were back to just the one mystery squeak! Huzzah!

Just south of the city is more farm lands. We saw strawberries that looked ripe for picking and another plant I thought might be spinach, but Andrew thought looked like some variety of kale. Neither of us wanted to risk sneaking in to try one.

We’re camping at Sunset Beach tonight, which despite the name is not right on the beach. So unless we want to climb over some dunes (which we don’t) we won’t be seeing any real sunsets or beaches.

For dinner Andrew was originally going to make some sort of rice and beans meal, but with the rice out he decided to do something different. Instead he came up with a crazy tuno-egg-bean salad with hummus. We had the tuno (vegan tuna alternative) and beans, so he just bought hardboiled eggs and hummus as well as grabbed some mayo and mustard packets from the deli and voila. We even had half a loaf of leftover sourdough bread to eat it with.

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