Memorial Day Ride - Pescadero

I took off on the bike Saturday with the basics of a route in mind and then just wandered around the hills until I made it to the ocean. Since it's Memorial Day weekend, I was a little worried about traffic, but apparently the route I took was treacherous enough to keep the majority of vacationers away. I spent the majority of my time switching between 2nd and 3rd gear, and when you're riding a moto geared as a dirt bike, that means you're cruising along at about 15-25 mph. The turns were extremely sharp, and the roads narrow. It gave me a great opportunity to practice my vanishing point technique. Here's the route I used on the way out to the Pacific:


Despite what the time estimation says, I was on the road for over 5 hours after everything was said and done. Although that included a couple "wrong turns" (I use the term loosely because I wasn't really going anywhere to begin with) and some time at the beach.

When I finally made it to the ocean, I wound up at Pescadero State Beach. It's a decent distance south of Half Moon Bay, which is one of two extremely busy South Bay beach destination (the other being Santa Cruz). I never encountered any sort of crowd at any point on the ride, so that was a relief. I parked the bike and snapped a couple pictures with my phone (sorry for the poor quality).


There was a group of sea lions sunning themselves on the rocks down by the water, so of course I had to get some pictures of them. I had to descend a sheer wall of loose gravel and dirt in my full riding gear (sans helmet), so that was a little interesting, but well worth the effort. I just wish I had grabbed the camera before taking off.



On the way back into the hills, I stopped at Pescadero to fuel up and wandered into a small grocery store. They had an interesting selection of fresh "mostly baked" breads, so I picked up some cinnamon English muffins and a loaf of cranberry walnut sourdough.