Ralph Weickel’s Blog

The day, May 31, 2009, found us enjoy the comforts of Half Moon Bay and we got a late start.  We rode north on the Pacific Coast Highway into San Francisco coming in on I-280 and then merging unto 19th Street.  19th Street took us to the Golden Gate Bridge and we navigated more traffic than anticipated for a Sunday morning.

The Golden Gate Bridge came into view and the day being overcast the tops of the Bridge were in the clouds.  We crossed the bridge going north, missing the toll, and enjoyed the view.  A stray garbage can on the Bridge forced a near accident as i was forced to brake quickly, due to cars in front of me swerved and hit their brakes.  Surviving the near collision, we stopped at the look out and saw the Bridge from an angle along with San Fransisco.  From the Bridge we continued north.

We took I-580 east off Route 1 and made the decision to head to Madesto as the entry point into Yosemite, which we decided to add to the itinerary.  The drive on I-580 was pretty cool as we crossed the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, again missing the toll.  We stayed on the 580 until it became the 5 and promptly missed our exit for Modesto.

Thanks to the wonders of GPS we programed the desired location Modesto HD dealer once we got off the interstate - we realized we missed a turn somewhere and had a nice ride through the California fruit growers.  A stop at a roadside stand netted bananas, apricots and peaches for less than $2.00.  We found the Modesto HD dealer shortly and received great guidance on how to plan for the ride through Yosemite.  The ride will require more time than we had allowed and we made the decison to ride to Sonora and start from there early in the morning.

Sonora provided us with a fine BBQ meal at Outlaw BBQ and Steak and an early night in.  Tomorrow the plan is to ride from Sonora through Yosemite and end in Reno.

Here’s to flexibility and best laid plans -  and have a marvelous day!

This entry was posted on Monday, June 1st, 2009 at 2:06 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.