Skyline Boulevard and Alice’s · part 3

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Near South San Francisco

   The dead outnumber the living in Colma by a margin of more than a thousand to one. In the early twentieth century, San Francisco banned new burials within city limits and then evicted most of its existing cemeteries, and the graves were moved a few kilometres south, to this small town just over the county line. Today Colma is a quiet, green landscape of memorial parks and monument workshops, where Wyatt Earp lies in a Jewish cemetery and Joe DiMaggio in a Catholic one. Locals like the joke on the town's own slogan: it's great to be alive in Colma.

   Read the complete Near South San Francisco write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Skyline Boulevard and Alice’s checkpoint 8 is where the day begins. Next is High point near Newark.

2. 2. High point near Newark

   Planning note

   You top out here; the road stops climbing. Next is Scenic stretch near Castro Valley.

3. 3. Scenic stretch near Castro Valley

   Planning note

   This is where the road stops climbing. Next is Back to Skyline Boulevard.

4. 4. Back to Skyline Boulevard

   This is the East Bay, the side of the bay that gets less attention than San Francisco and has more hills to ride. The point is in the hills above Berkeley, near Kensington and Orinda, where narrow streets climb steeply past eucalyptus trees and houses perch on slopes with views of the bay and the Golden Gate. A line of ridges, the Berkeley Hills, runs along the whole east side of the bay, and the Hayward Fault lies at their foot, which is something people here think about more than they mention.

   Read the complete Skyline Boulevard write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Back to Skyline Boulevard closes the day.