This morning, I woke up at about 7AM in the Sunset neighborhood of San Francisco. Last night, I parked the RV near Judah and 11th Ave on the same street as the electric buses. Many times throughout the night, the loud buses passed by the RV causing a loud, vibrating sound for a few seconds.
I took a bus to Downtown San Francisco and then walked a couple of miles to the bike rental company location on Hyde Avenue named Blazing Saddles. By 8:30 AM, I was on the road heading across the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito to Mill Valley to Tiburon. The ride had almost constant views of the San Francisco Bay along with the relatively small-town atmospheres of Sausalito, Mill Valley and Tiburon. It’s interesting that a businessperson can live in Tiburon and raise a family there, while commuting to and from San Francisco via a 30-minute ferry. The lifestyles in the two cities are so different, but it seems like it would be the best of both worlds.
My favorite city along the bike route is Mill Valley. Mill Valley is a laid back, family oriented, small city/town a few miles across the bridge from San Francisco. The nature is beautiful and the town seems to have anything a family could want, especially relatively easy access to San Francisco. My favorite part of Mill Valley is the historical, older part of town near Old Mill Park. This neighborhood has older, character-filled homes that all seem to be ideally situated in their surroundings. There is a creek running through the village and towering Redwood Trees throughout the area.
The Downtown area of the city consists one main square block, with one of the streets extending an additional block in each direction. The center of the square block is a parking area which is surrounding by older, street-retail buildings on all sides. The building house businesses ranging from art galleries, restaurants, clothing shops, and more. I stopped in the area for a half hour and ate a sweet potato curry burrito at an Indian Restaurant named Avatar’s Restaurant (http://www.yelp.com/biz/avatars-restaurant-mill-valley.)
One of my favorite parts of Mill Valley was the public library. The public library is multi-story building built along a hillside near Old Mill Park. The building is designed in a way so that most of the rooms have beautiful views of the Redwood trees and greenery outside. Seems like it would be an enjoyable place to read a book or study.
After Mill Valley, I continued on the bicycle path to Tiburon. Like all the other parts of the route, this portion of the route passed through very affluent neighborhoods with multi-million dollar homes with views of the bay.
I arrived in Tiburon at 2PM, and had about an hour available to walk around and relax before the 3PM ferry departed to Downtown San Francisco. I walked a few blocks and eventually decided to have a slice of pizza at Waypoint Pizza on Main Street. The atmosphere was nice and pleasant and a great place to relax.
On Main Street, there was an information stand which had some historical information on Tiburon’s Main Street. The Main Street is one of the shortest Main Streets, stretching just a few hundred feet from beginning to end. Originally, there was just a thin piece of land where the actual asphalt road now sits. This thin piece of land was surrounded of both sides by water and connected the large hill in the background with the other end of Main Street. Over time, buildings were constructed on wood structures built above the water on both sides of the thin piece of land. Eventually, the entire water area was filled in with earth and is now indistinguishable from the surrounding land.
The first stop of the ferry boat was Angel’s Island, a former immigration checkpoint and current State Park in the bay. At this stop, a group of older hikers came on the ferry and we began discussing the recreational activities on the island. The island has many miles of paved and dirt trails which are great for hiking. One of the dirt trails accesses Mt Livermore, the highest point on the Island at an elevation of about 800 feet.
I arrived at Downtown San Francisco at about 4PM, dropped off the bike, and took an Uber to the Sunset Neighborhood where the RV was parked. At about 5PM, I picked Gabriela up for her apartment and we drove back to LA. After about 7 hours of driving with several short breaks, we arrived in LA at 1AM.
