Sept. 16 - Raccoon wars and the Golden Gate

Olema to San Francisco

Thursday - September 16
What a night! It was quiet until about 12:30am. That's when the raccoons showed up. The first one unzipped the bento bag on Donna's bike and made off with her M&M's and Clif Shot bloks. It was the noise of the Clif Shot wrapper being mangled by the raccoon from the picnic table that woke us up. Doug hit him with a shot of Halt (dog repellent) but it went all over the bikes and panniers too so he had to get up and clean. We moved the food panniers under the tent fly and went back to sleep listening to owls hooting and coyotes singing. Doug woke to the sound of the pannier being pulled across the grass a little later. The raccoon was trying to figure out how to open it but the Fastex buckle had him stymied. He had brought 2 buddies with him this time. By this time we had all the panniers in the tent with us and the coyotes were really singing close by........raccoons didn't seem to care......but sleep was a little elusive for us. We slept in until the crows started their morning coffee klatch at 8:00. The students had already left by then but Ryan, one of the assistants, said the raccoons had many successful raids in their camp last night. By the light of day, our midnight raccoon war was a funny story.

After breakfast it was a short ride to the Point Reyes Bear Valley Visitor Center. The students were there as well, quite immersed in an outdoor lecture. The visitor center is very well done with a mix of cultural and natural history of the area.

The seismograph which is almost always active since we are right on top of the San Andreas fault at this point.

A group of 5th graders showed up just as we were leaving....quite a boisterous group compared to the Bowling Green students.........but what a great place for a field trip.

We were on the road by 10:00 with what was already an eventful day behind us and more adventure ahead of us. We left Highway 1 at this point and followed Sir Francis Drake Boulevard into the peninsula. There was very little traffic and lots of sunshine and warmth. We did run into some really rough pavement through Samuel Taylor State Park just to make up for the smooth stuff yesterday. Also somewhere in this section Doug got stung by a bee on his hand.

We got to Fairfax and real bike lanes right at noon. This is the biggest town we've been in since Eureka so it was quite the contrast, especially having been in such rural and wild surroundings all week.

This place was just the ticket for 2 hungry cyclists.

They had this nice outdoor seating as well. There was a bike shop right across the street but they were out of the local bike route map. The 3rd bike shop finally had one. We saw more bike shops in 3 or 4 miles than we had seen the whole rest of the trip!

The bike routes were quite well signed and very pleasant.

The freeway is just across the hedge. Glad we aren't over there!!

This path took us all the way to Sausalito.

That's Highway 101 bridge in the distance and the San Francisco Bay coming up.

Looked like our hopes of clear skies over the Golden Gate would not be realized so we really took our time wandering along the shoreline bike path.

There seemed to be quite a few other tourists doing the same thing in Sausalito.

No problem with speed limits for us.

It is 2:30 and we have one last hill to climb up to the bridge.

The bike/pedestrian path comes up under the footing of the bridge.

This side of the bridge is only open to walkers after 3:30. It's time to put our warm clothes back on because not only is it foggy but it is a little breezy as well.

And did we mention wet?

All the walkers and most of the cyclists were on the other side of the bridge so we pretty much had the  place to ourselves....not counting the cars that had to keep zooming along. We just ignored them as we absorbed this amazing structure.

The fog just made it seem even more mythical.

We could hear the ocean but could barely see it.  We could feel the vibration from the fog horn as we stood  above it and that was our sound of the day.

Then we were over and in the Presidio just like that.

We had planned to follow a road that had a bike lane to Lombard Street but this highway construction project was a sizeable obstacle.

The detour led us back to the Presidio where we dropped down to sea level on the Crissy Field bike path.

It was at least 10 degrees warmer down here than it had been on the bridge and up by the construction project.

And it was quite the scenic route so was probably a better alternative anyway. 

It did take us a bit to figure out how to get to our motel which we reached just in time...5:00. The last 2 blocks were the only really major traffic we had to deal with but it was still pretty challenging.

We stayed at a Travelodge and the clerk gave us the room right behind the office which was ground level and had lots of room for the bikes. We showered and walked down to Ghirardelli Square for dinner.

The night-time raid by the raccoons caught up with us on the walk back to the motel and we hit the sack pretty early. So much for observing the nightlife in the big city but what a wonderful, eventful day!!

Today's miles = 39.4
Total miles = 446.1