• Start: Samuel Taylor State Park, Marin County, California
• Finish: San Francisco
• Distance: 47.7k
• Elevation: 515 meters

Our last day of the trip! Today we pull into San Francisco. We started off the day a half hour later than usual (a treat) and spent quite a bit more time breaking camp than usual. We had a lot of organizing and final cleaning to do. But we finally rolled about 10:00 or so.

We decided that for this final leg we should try to ride together rather than following our usual routine. There are lots of twists and turns to make it by bike from Marin to San Francisco. At least if we stayed together we’d be lost together. Our leader, Bruce, was very kind to take over the driving for the day, as we all wanted to finish off the trip by riding across the golden gate. Thank you Bruce. A trip well lead.

John graciously agreed to lead the group and did an excellent job — we didn’t lose a single rider! We first headed for Fairfax and found a very nice stop for coffee. From there we followed a mixture of bike trails and backroads to work our way south to the bay. Here is a shot of our first view of the bay, including the bay bridge.

It was a lovely ride through Marin county. Bright and sunny all the way to the golden gate. Here is a shot of Ellie, Diane, Jean and Necla enjoying lunch in a nice Mill Valley park.

It got busier as we got closer to the golden gate — mostly with lots of tourists. But we made it to the north shore without incident. San Francisco was a magnificent view as usual.

And the golden gate was just perfect. One tower in the clouds — just like in the pictures.

The ride from the shoreline to the gate was quite a clime, but well worth it. The ride across was cold and blustery, but that is just part of the golden gate. It was indeed a magnificent finale to a wonderful trip.