Springtime on the Pacific Coast Highway

Sunshine!!  After Sunday being cold, damp, windy and generally not real pleasant, Monday moring dawned sunny, fairly warm, dead flat calm and very nice.


I was up for breakfast at about 7:30 AM and on the road at about 8:30.  Today would take me through San Francisco and across the Golden Gate Bridge.

But first, an unplanned detour in to Petaluma...  Perhaps because I was overly relaxed this morning, perhaps becuse I wasn't paying as much attention as I should have - perhaps because the signage sucks?  I thought I was on Highway 1, honest.  But as I found myself following traffic and wandering in to downtown Petaluma, a quick glance at my map confirmed that yes, indeed, I was no longer anywhere near the coast road.

Shoulda taken that left toin at Albecoikey.

At any rate, after retracing my way back to the beach - without going all the way back to Bodega Bay - I was once again southbound toward San Francisco.  I joined US 101 briefly just north of Marin and jumped off just before heading over the bridge and in to the Marin Headlands State Park.  It is from this place that you get views like this:


So, of course, one has to snap an obiligatory "California Postcard Shot"


I enjoyed the view from the Headlands along with 800 or 900 of my closest friends and after a tour all the way out to the streets and roads at Fort Barry and back, I was ready to ride over The Bridge.

Yeah, OK, so tens of thousands of people cross the Golden Gate Bridge every day without a second thought.  For the locals around San Francisco, Oakland, Marin, Sausalito and so on, it's just a normal part of the daily grind of getting around a very large, very crowded city.  You know what?  It's the third time in my entire life that I've crossed this bridge - and the last time was in a car 20 years ago.  There's something about riding a motorcycle across this most American of American Icons.  The way the shadows of the cables play across the road and the back of your gloves; the breeze and the scent of the ocean just a few hundred feet beneath your wheels; that classic view of the giant towers raking back over your head as you watch the swoop of the big suspension cables out of the corner of your eye.  It was just plain cool, that's all.

At the south end of the bridge, as I enter San Francisco, I get off the highway in order to head over to the Palace of Fine Arts in search of The Exploratorium.  I'm a science museum geek.  Most places I travel to, if they have a decent science museum, I have to go visit.  The Exploratorium is the grandady of most modern, hands-on museums and I've never been.  I don't get to San Francisco very often and the few times I have been, I've always been preoccupied with business and too busy to get to visit.  Today, I'm on vacation and have tons of time.

The only small glitch in my plan is that today is Monday.  The museum is closed on Mondays.  Oops.  Oh well, more time for lunch, I guess.

I continue on south out of the city and back in to the sparsely populated regions along the Central Coast.  About an hour south of San Francisco, I take a moment to go visit the Pigeon Point Lighthouse


The sunshine and warmth that I had enjoyed upon leaving Bodega Bay had long ago vanished and the coast was being the coast again.  I sat and watched the ocean for a time a the lighthouse but got back on the road in short order.

Unfortunately, this is the point in the trip where my digital camera conked out - or I thought it had at any rate.  There are no picures for the next day and a half of the trip.

So, on Monday evening, I pulled in to Monterey and found a hotel just a couple of blocks from Cannery Row and the Monterey Bay Aquarium - if I couldn't do The Exploratorium today, I was bound that I wasn't going to miss the Aquarium tomorrow morning.

A few links