Why this ride
Out of Bodega Bay, one way: 390 km, roughly 5 h 46 in the saddle. On the way it passes Lodi, near Lodi and Daly City. The line favours views over speed.
CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Santa Cruz Mountains Flow · part 2
Plan this ride
- Recorded distance
- 390 km
- Riding-time estimate
- 5 h 46
- Journey
- One way; return travel is separate
Distance and timing basis
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.
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Bodega Bay
Alfred Hitchcock knew a menacing landscape when he saw one, and in 1962 he brought Tippi Hedren and a great many crows and gulls to Bodega Bay to film The Birds. The little harbour town on the Sonoma Coast, about an hour and a half north of the Golden Gate, has been living gently off that fame ever since, and the old schoolhouse that appears in the film still stands a few miles inland in the village of Bodega. But the real show here is the coast itself: a sheltered bay full of fishing boats, a long sandspit, and the granite headland of Bodega Head jutting out into the Pacific.
Read the complete Bodega Bay write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Santa Cruz Mountains Flow photo pull-off is where the day begins. Next is San Francisco Bay Area return.
2. Near Lodi, on the way back
Lodi is flat, hot, and full of grapes. It lies on the eastern edge of the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta in the Central Valley, where the land is so level you can watch weather move across it for an hour before it arrives. This spot sits near Woodbridge, just north of Lodi itself, close to where the Mokelumne River runs west out of the Sierra foothills toward the Delta.
Read the complete Near Lodi, on the way back write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
San Francisco Bay Area return comes up about 185 km into the recorded legs. Next is Food stop near Lodi.
3. Food stop near Lodi
Planning note
A break here. Next is Santa Cruz Mountains Flow checkpoint 8.
4. Near Daly City
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.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Santa Cruz Mountains Flow checkpoint 8 closes the day. Next is Back to Santa Cruz.
5. Back to Santa Cruz
That is the kind of place where the Bay Area's tech wealth seems very far away, even though Woodside and Portola Valley, home to some of the most expensive real estate in the country, are only a few kilometres down the hill.
Read the complete Santa Cruz write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Finish at Back to Santa Cruz. That is the ride.
Leg by leg
Food stop near Lodi to Near Daly City
Food stop near Lodi → Near Daly City is 131 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.