After a wonderful pancake breakfast provided by the Bolanos family, we packed up our things and prepared for the first real day on tour. We had to cross the Golden Gate Bridge to get to our beach and then head back across to the bay ferry and then on to our next host.
We traveled through SF on the way to the bridge. It was a much more pleasant ride today with some great views of the city. We traveled though a bunch of awesome neighborhoods and gradually got closer and closer to the entrance to the bay.
We found a grocery store and stocked up on bananas, bread, bagels, peanut butter, and jelly. Then we started the quick approach to the bridge.
We crossed the bridge towards the Golden Gate national recreation area. The bridge was full of pedestrians and cyclists with a 5 foot lane that was supposed to contain both directions of bike travel (and the pedestrians that weren’t paying attention). We weaved in and out of bikes and people and eventually made it to the other side. An uphill tunnel took us into the National recreation area and we soon arrived at Rodeo beach, our chosen location to dip our tires.
Realizing that we were gonna be cutting it close on catching the ferry, we quickly made some food and raced back the 15 miles to the boat docks. This was a much more pleasant ride with the winds mostly at our backs and much clearer bike lines (except for the one time a taxi cut us off and we nudged each other while slamming the brakes).
With almost 30 minutes to spare, we purchased tickets for the ferry to get across the San Francisco Bay to Vallejo. We had great views of Alcatraz, downtown SF, the bay bridge and Golden Gate Bridge, and the rest of the hills.
After the ferry, everything started to get a bit miserable, we got off and everything was hotter and really dry. We had 30 miles to our host but it was through some pretty miserable roads with little shade and lots of traffic and wind. We eventually reached a very nice bike path but had to climb a hill almost immediately. After a few stops, it started getting dark. We had google maps lead us through a completely dark park and eventually reached a McDonald’s right next to our host and got some much needed rest and nourishment. Our host was not home but very graciously left his back gate open so we were able to camp in his backyard and use his hot tub.
We learned a lot from this exhausting day, specifically about our ability to plan and how reality lines up with those plans. We are still pretty exhausted but are working to correct. Our bodies are also still getting adjusted to biking this much. An upcoming rest day will help us a lot with planning and strength. We are very excited for a couple weeks from now when we are stronger and more used to life on a bike!