5. San Fransico

Jul 21, 2009 Uncategorized

After my first night roughing the elements and pitching a tent it’s time to head to San Fransisco. If memory serves me correctly, it was roughly a 300 mile trip. Not too bad for one day. I also learned about the Avenue of the Giants, which is a loop that connects to highway 101 and has a nice detour through the redwoods.

Before I left the campsite some KOA officials showed up in their golf cart to fix the electrical outlet. It turned out I didn’t have power the previous night not because I didn’t pay for it, but because the people working at the front desk were incompetent. The guy I spoke with told me the people at the front desk knew my camp site didn’t have power because it was clearly marked on their chart. So not only did they rape me at $27/night, they also didn’t even provide me with all the services that included.

The Avenue of the Giants was an awesome detour. Here are my photos from that portion of the drive:

This is the bottom of a redwood that was laying on its side.

I tried to capture the height of one of these trees with these 2 pictures

Another bike shot

 

I also managed to get lost due to a misleading sign. Instead of continuing on through the redwoods I ended up on a back road. Things were pretty sketch because it was a 1-1.5 lane road. There wasn’t a lot of a space. There were many blind corners that had me worried about an oncoming car coming around the corner and killing me. I persevered and manage to fight off my fears for a very fun ride full of twists, turns, and hills. After a few miles I was quite certain I was lost, but I figured I was committed so I might as well see where the rabbit’s hole was taking me.

I ended up on a gravel road which I was pretty sure lead to someone’s house. There was also a concrete bridge that went over a stream. I decided to flex the BMW’s off road muscle and took it down the gravel road to the bridge. When I crossed the bridge I was tempted to play in the gravel a bit. I’ve never driven a dirt bike, but it seems like a lot of fun. The rocks were fairly large for riding over, and the instability quickly had me assessing the risk of dumping my bike on a bunch of rocks in the middle of no where versus playing around. So I turned around a headed back to the bridge. Here are the pics from the bridge:

This is the view from on the bridge facing the road I took to get here

View looking south from the bridge

View looking north from the bridge

Gravel area I briefly played around on

After the redwoods I made one last stop at the shrine of the redwoods. For only $4 ($6 in a car) I was able to drive through a redwood tree. As cool as that sounds it was pretty lame. I’ll let the pics explain it, but it was pretty much a U-turn through a redwood. At least it came with a free postcard. The pics:

Some van driving through.  The entering the tree said it was 7′x7′.

Shrine tree info

Looking into the tree

Looking up inside the tree

After that I was finally headed for San Fransisco. The Golden Gate bridge was really cool. It was a a foggy day, and I arrived later than planned. Because of that I didn’t get any good pics. Here are my only San Fran pics:

The Golden Gate Bridge

 

I think this is Alcatraz, but I have no clue

Stuck in the middle of San Fran it was hopeless to find a hotel (although my neighbors in the morning told me there was a great one at the edge of town). I texted my buddy Bryce and asked him if he lived in San Fran. This was actually a loaded question because I knew he had accepted a job offer there in March. What I didn’t know was that he had only moved there a week earlier. Bryce was kind enough to let me crash on his very comfy couch. We had a few beers and some Thai food and fun, relaxing night.

The plan for tomorrow is to make it to Peter and Pasadena.