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June 29, 2011

Oakhurst to San Francisco

During the night there was a rainstorm and most of the bikes needed drying off. The weather was still threatening, so 3 of the women chose to ride in the van (Clemens did a great job of rearranging the bags to fit everything and everyone in) and the rest of us got our the rain gear. Of course, about 30-45 minutes after we started out the rain gear was no longer necessary, which required another stop to remove everything and repack the bikes. Herbert took Ulli on a different route and headed over to the coast so he could take her up Hwy 1 from Cambria to San Francisco. The rest of us were ready to get to San Francisco, so we ended up taking the freeways after some cross-country travel. We arrived in San Francisco on the Wednesday before the July Fourth weekend, not the best time to find motels in our price range. But Franz knew what area he wanted to be in (Van Ness @ Lombard) and after some legwork, he and Daryl found rooms at the Redwood – no pool, donuts for breakfast and very poor wi-fi connections, but convenient enough that the bikes could stay at the hotel and Franz could use the van to ferry people to the Embarcadero and the Piers for more souvenir shopping. After a couple of hours, we headed back to the hotel and then Rob used the Google search app on his phone and found a hip, new restaurant that the 8 of us went to in the van. Rob and Daryl planned on leaving in the morning to return South. We planned on breaking the trip in Cambria to see Daryl's mother. By leaving on the Thursday, we missed some of the holiday traffic and the trip was pretty smooth, with Rob on the Gold Wing and Daryl, with all the luggage piled high, in the Porsche. Friday, July 1, we finished the journey home to Canyon Lake, experiencing a lot more traffic on the freeways and as we cut through parts of Greater Los Angeles.

It was a great trip and we experienced 4600 miles of fun and great scenery in 8 western states.