We woke up early so that we could go catch the sunrise from where we had watched the sunset last night. We were a little on the early side but the sky was brightening up very quickly. Then suddenly the sun came up, right over the downtown skyline and the Golden Gate Bridge. We watched a very scenic sunrise over an incredible spot. We couldn’t believe that this area isn’t packed with people everyday. On our way back we spotted a few deer grazing, who were a little surprised to find us there.
As we packed up and left our camp site, so did everybody else, and they wished us a safe journey. We headed to the visitor centre to replenish our depleted water supply. There we met a lady with her friend and a dog who were trying to find a places to camp along the coast of California. She said the California State Park fees had skyrocketed recently due to the State’s budget problem (now $35 and up for motorists), and that they couldn’t justify staying at the parks anymore. Since most of the Northern California coastline is State Parks they were not sure what they were going to do. We mentioned to her that Oregon had very reasonably priced state parks (with free and actually hot showers).
As we cycled out of the Golden Gate Park we met a few other day cyclists. It appeared many cycle out to the park in the morning. To get out of the park we had to take a one-lane tunnel with a stop light to regulate the traffic. The sign said 5 mins but we really had about 3 min before traffic from the other end started to come. We basically made it through just in time (luckily it was all downhill). There was a bike lane and very little traffic so we would have been okay regardless, but it still would have been exciting to face on-coming traffic in the tunnel.
We crossed the Golden Gate Bridge in beautiful sunshine. The traffic on the bridge was heavy (we suspect it is always heavy), so it wasn’t as peaceful despite the dedicated pedestrian/bike only path on the side of the bridge. Traffic was noisy but the spectacular view of the bridge made it easy to tune it out. On the other side we read a plaque dedicated to the people who had built the bridge. They had a net to catch construction workers which saved at least 19 lives, but they still had an entire work platform fall through causing the death of 10 workers.
We followed the well signed bike path along the waterfront into San Francisco. We met many tourists who had rented bikes from the city, and were biking out to the bridge. We were amused to find some of them get off their bikes to walk them up a gentle incline, as we passed them with a fully loaded bike. I think many people don’t get the concept of proper gearing.
As we got closer into the city, we could see the fog rolling in across the bridge. A few hours later the whole bridge was engulfed in fog.
We arrived at our priceline. At check in the people in front of us were turned away as check in was not until 4PM. We were hoping to be able to leave our bikes in their storage room, when to our surprised they said that they had a room available right away for us! 🙂
We spent the rest of the day relaxing, getting groceries and walking around the area. We couldn’t believe how steep some of the roads were. They were 18%+ grade, and cars were parked perpendicular to the road. We were glad we didn’t have to bike up any of these roads with our loaded bikes! The roads had stairs instead of a regular sidewalk!
Trip Around The World 
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