CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
Built for flow, views and useful stops rather than navigation busywork. 490 km round from East Palo Alto - plan on about 7 h 53 of riding. On the way it passes Moss Beach, Inverness and in Allendale. The climb of the day is Half Moon Bay.
East Palo Alto sits on the flat edge of San Francisco Bay, right where the Dumbarton Bridge launches its long, low span towards Fremont. To the west lies the wealth of Palo Alto and Menlo Park, home of Silicon Valley's giants; to the east, the salt ponds and marshes of the bay. It is a dense, busy corridor, cut by Highway 101, and for riders it is mostly a place to pass through, refuel and plan the escape to the hills.
Read the complete Scenic stretch near East Palo Alto write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Next is Napa Silverado Trail Backroads high point.
Half Moon Bay is where the Peninsula's mountains finally meet the Pacific. The town sits on a wide coastal plain, backed by the green flank of the Santa Cruz Mountains and fronted by a long crescent of sand, and it feels like a different state from the busy bay side only twenty minutes away over Highway 92. Fog arrives most summer afternoons, so mornings are your best bet for sun.
Read the complete Half Moon Bay write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
You top out here; the road stops climbing. Next is Napa Silverado Trail Backroads scenic road.
Moss Beach clings to a low bluff above the Pacific, a scatter of houses, cypress trees and fields on the San Mateo coast between Montara and Half Moon Bay. It is a small, quiet place, often wrapped in fog, where the sound of the surf is constant and the air smells of salt, seaweed and eucalyptus. For many riders, it is a first taste of the wild coast just south of San Francisco.
Read the complete Moss Beach write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 54 km into the recorded legs you reach Napa Silverado Trail Backroads scenic road. Next is Napa Silverado Trail Backroads photo pull-off.
The San Andreas Fault runs straight up Tomales Bay, and in the 1906 earthquake the land on the western side lurched several metres north in a matter of seconds. Inverness sits on that western side, on the shore of the bay, a small village of wooden houses among the trees, at the gateway to the Point Reyes peninsula. It is a quiet, slightly eccentric place, with a general store, a few restaurants and a lot of bird-watchers.
Read the complete Inverness write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Napa Silverado Trail Backroads photo pull-off, about halfway. Next is Food stop in Allendale.
Food at 354 km, roughly 7 hours into the riding. Next is San Francisco Bay Area return.
Central California's valley floor is flat in a way that has to be seen to be believed. The land around Dixon and Davis, in the Sacramento Valley, is a table of irrigated fields stretching in all directions, with rice, tomatoes, sunflowers, almonds and sugar beets laid out in squares, and the Vaca Mountains rising to the west. A rider coming from the Bay Area crosses the Carquinez Strait, then drops onto this plain, and the change is abrupt: the fog and the redwoods give way to dry air, big skies and long straight roads.
Read the complete Near Dixon, on the way back write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
San Francisco Bay Area return comes up about 300 km into the recorded legs. Next is Napa Silverado Trail Backroads checkpoint 8.
South of San Francisco's city limits, the land runs out abruptly. Daly City's houses, the ones with the colourful matching boxes that inspired the song Little Boxes, cover the hills right up to the edge of high, crumbling sea cliffs, and below them the Pacific pounds a long empty beach.
Read the complete Near Daly City write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Napa Silverado Trail Backroads checkpoint 8 closes the day. Next is Back to Napa Silverado.
Place association under review. The retained source text conflicts with its location label; verify the stop in the planner before using it.
The southern end of San Francisco Bay is not the part that appears on postcards, which makes it more interesting for anyone who likes places that are a little overlooked. Egrets, avocets and pelicans work the shallows, and the smell on a warm day is salt, mud and marsh.
Read the complete Napa Silverado write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Back to Napa Silverado. That is the ride.
Food stop in Allendale → Near Dixon, on the way back can flow quickly, but only if you keep village limits and junction sightlines sacred. Fast connectors are where rides get untidy when fatigue creeps in.