Hotel in Gualala
12 October 2011
The hotel served a nice hot breakfast. I was only two days away from San Francisco, but I knew that the last leg into the city would probably be pretty annoying and not something I wanted to do at the end of a long day. So I wanted to get as far as I could today.
Fortunately, the weather was cooperating.
We reached Stewarts Point quickly, and I was now in familiar territory again.
The ride from Stewarts Point to Jenner is a piece of cake when there are not gale-force winds trying to blow you into the ocean.
I caught up with the Belgians, and met a bunch of other cycle tourists, but lost Jerry at some point. I ate a quick lunch in Jenner.
In the afternoon I pushed harder. I passed through Bodega Bay without stopping, after which the road turns inland towards Tomales.
A couple of the inland hills wore me down a bit, so I stopped in the late afternoon for a snack at Tomales. Here the Belgians caught up with me. We headed back out to the coast in the direction of Pt Reyes Station.
I got to Pt Reyes Station just at the edge of useful daylight. There was only one hotel in town, a bit over my budget, but what the heck, it was quite nice. I had the room right off the common room, so it felt like I was living in a house.
In the last two days, I had covered 157 miles and done over 10,000 feet of climb, and I was pretty famished. I walked into town and had a delicious dinner at Osteria Stellina. Their pork osso bucco (bone-in, slow cooked) was positively magical. What a fitting end to the adjacent-to-the-Pacific-Ocean part of my tour.
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