LA Bike Tour

I visited friends in Southern California for the weekend.  As typical for me, I had to include biking in the weekend activities.  They took me on their local mountain bike trails, which was a workout me.  I never sweated more in my life - and it was only about 6 miles.  YIKES!!

We also went on an organized bike tour of the LA area.  We joined a group of 10 on a 32 miles tour through eight LA cities.  It was unbelievable in more ways than one.  

1.) It was really cool to bike through the cities of Beverly Hills, Brentwood, Belair & Santa Monica.  The sights allowed me to forget about the hills we climbed.  

 2.) We biked on city streets, which was exhilarating in its own right with all the traffic.  I must say the car drivers were very polite and patient with us cyclist.

   


3.)It is always fun to bike on the beach path and along the Venice canals.

4.) We took the LA River Trail for a few miles.  Although, it was not very exciting, it is neat to bike near an area I see in the movies so often.    





I would recommend this tour for anyone visiting LA.  My friends have lived in LA all their lives and said we went to many areas they have never explored.  

Biking & Camping

What was supposed to be a bikecamping trip ended up in a camping & biking weekend instead.  Regardless, it was tons of fun.  Biking on new-to-me trails, enjoying time with family and escaping the heat from home.  

Half Moon Bay

We started the weekend with a ride along the Half Moon Bay California Coastal Trail.  It is a nicely paved trail with lots of great scenery and fabulous fish & chips for lunch.  We kind of lost the trail towards the end and road a few single track "mountain bike" routes for a bit, but that was OK.  Finding our way out of the Rtiz Carlton was an adventure......  we were told by a hotel employee to bike on the golf cart path - which we all knew was wrong, but she said "everyone does it".    Well, it was the wrong for several reasons and did not get us out of the hotel grounds.  We eventually found our own way out using google maps and our intuition. 

We camped in a nearby campground in the redwoods.  We had a very private campsite out of view of the other campers.  We could still hear the excited of the little campers, but nothing that ear plugs could not solve for a good night's sleep. 

Memorial County Park

The next morning we took off a little early, I think before the little nearby campers were up, to bike in two different places.  First, on the Devil's Slide Trail.  It used to be part of Hwy 1, but landslides force 1 1/2 miles of the road to be closed to cars.  A tunnel was built for cars, but the road was maintained for  walkers and cyclist.  It is a short, but steep trail.  There was no shortage of great vistas along the way.  

Devil's Slide Trail

Our Last stop was for SF Sunday Streets.  Once a month the City of San Francisco closes a street in a different section of the city.  On this Sunday, Ocean Blvd and Lincoln Drive in Golden Gate Park were closed.  We enjoyed three car-free SF Bay Area biking experiences in one short weekend.  I couldn't ask for a better weekend.