Today we began our ride to Pueblo, Colo. Ian and I got a fairly late 10:30am start from the visitors center in Golden Gate Park, next to the bridge with same name. Thanks so much to Tracy for agreeing to drop us off and then drive back to St George by herself.
The bikes felt extra heavy at first and it was cool enough for a long sleeve shirt over the cycling jeresy. The first 6 miles were along the SF waterfront of parks, cyclists, walkers, piers and wharfs to a ferry terminal. There we caught a ferry to Vallejo, quite far across to the northeastern part of the Bay. By then it was lunch time and so we immediately stopped at a local diner and had a big meatloaf lunch. So in the first 2 hrs, we cycled about 7 miles.
After lunch we finally got going along a route that had more climbing than we expected. Also quite a few traffic signals in places. The nicest part of the ride was quiet and rural Pleasant Valley Rd at the end. We generally had a good tail wind and it got plenty warm enough on the climbs to break a good sweat. We covered 49 miles at about 13.5 mph.
We got to our campsite at Solano Lake County Park, outside of Winters, at about 5:30pm. It has very poor cell service and many wild, somewhat noisy Peacocks. Ian and I ate and showered went to bed fairly early.
We met no other touring cyclists today, but many curious people asking where we were headed. Tomorrow will be flat to Sacremento, then the climb of the Sierras begins.
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