By Jason
The Bay Area is a biker’s dream. There are bike lines through neighborhoods and on many major roads, and we’ve got trails leading up into the hills and mountains and down along the bay.
This is great luck for me because on of the things we left behind in Cleveland was the great bike trail system. Between the Metroparks, the Towpath Trail, and the Bike and Hike Trail, the Greater Cleveland Area has plenty of cycling opportunities.
Last weekend Ann was working so I took a couple of biking trips. The first was to Coyote Hills Regional Park. When you drive over the Dumbarton Bridge from Palo Alto to the East Bay you pass over acres and acres of wetlands, evaporation pools, and the south end of the bay. The Coyote Hills rise abruptly from the wetlands, named for the coyotes that would howl at passing trains. The coyotes are gone, replaced with sheep. More on that below.
This is my bike, a classic Huffy I bought at K-Mart in high school. It’s not in the best shape, but I did get the brakes working again before the trip.
The bay side of the park is pretty scenic, with random rock outcroppings. It also smells a little unpleasant, probably from the evaporation pools at low tide.
After coming around a bend I saw this amazingly deep rock quarry. It’s not particularly wide across, as quarries go, but it goes well below sea level and you can’t see the bottom from the edge.
And they have a flock of sheep.
After I circled the park I climbed to the top of the hill. Here’s the view from the top of the first stone peak.
And here’s the view from the highest hill in the park – you can see where I was in the distance below.
Here’s a small lizard.
Here you can see the Dumbarton Bridge in the distance.
Click here to see even more photos.
On Sunday I biked around Mountain View, starting form our apartment and taking the Stevens Creek Trail down past my office to Shoreline and the Palo Alto Baylands. I didn’t take any pictures but I biked around for about 3 hours before returning home, exhausted. I am out of shape but there are plenty of trails left to ride.