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Trek Travel 2012 California Coast Part 2

This is part two in a series of posts about the Trek Travel bike tour my wife and I took with the owner of the shop I work at and some friends.  Part one covered the first two days beginning at the Sea Ranch lodge and finished with us staying in Bodega Bay.  My post today will cover the next two days that lead us to Tiburon.

 


Day 3
That tiny person is my wife
Day three  had us riding north for a while in order to do a loop inland for a bit.  This ride featured plenty of riding on the coast that was spectacular, but we also had the opportunity to see
some of the forest near the coast.  We started by riding up the coast the opposite way that we had ridden the day before.  We rode along the coast for about 10 miles before turning inland where we were treated with more beautiful riding through the woods in the Russian River valley.  We actually stopped to walk into the woods to get pictures of the huge trees - like nothing I've ever seen.



Climbing after leaving Occidental
We had lunch in Occidental at about the 25 mile point.  We took our time since we really were'nt looking forward to the big climb that was down the road.  By the time we finished eating though, we had decided to cut the big hill out.  We took a different road out of town instead.  We didn't miss much climbing, however.  The road out of town sent us straight up.  Thankfully, it was pretty short.




Looks like the road drops into the ocean!

The road pretty much headed straight back toward the ocean.  A little hilly but the narrow country
roads and very little traffic was great.  It all led to a gentle downhill with an amazing view of the ocean.

The ride finished with about five miles on the Pacific Coast Highway, back to the hotel at Bodega Bay.  In all, day three was almost 40 miles and just a bit over 3200 feet of climbing.

Day 4

Meeting Hitchcock.  Sort of.

The church featured in 'The Birds'
Day four began in Bodega Bay heading south to finish in Tiburon.  Like usual, we dropped from the group pretty quickly.  This time, however, wasn't because we couldn't keep up.  Shortly after we left Bodega Bay we realized that since we headed west, we were riding right past Bodega - where the move 'The Birds' was filmed.  Being movie buffs, we decided that we couldn't pass it by.  We hung a left , going off-route, so that we could get pictures of the schoolhouse, church, and other iconic places from the film.  We even had the chance to talk to some locals who were out for a horseback ride.



Our side trip put us way behind everyone, and we hadn't even made it five miles yet.  Since we weren't in a hurry, we figured we were on our own for the day.  It wasn't very long before we were met by one of our guides who had ridden back to check on us.  We assured him we were ok and gave him the low down on our side trip.  He rode with us for a few more miles before taking off to ride ahead to check on everyone else.  To our surprise, they had all waited on us at our lunch stop in Tomales.


After lunch we stayed on our trajectory back toward the coast and through small towns like Seahaven, Tocaloma, and Woodacre along with familiar sounding towns like Lagunitas and Fairfax until we ended up with an exhilarating descent into Tiburon.  We stayed there in another fantastic hotel and had a...memorable...dinner that night at a very nice restaurant within walking distance.
Day Four's stats: 66 miles, 1750 feet of climbing.



My next post in this series will cover our last day of riding into San Francisco and up Mt Tam.  Stay tuned!
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Location: Marin County, CA, USA

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