Tag: Camping

18 Reasons threw a Full Moon Barn Dance party at Circle JR Ranch in Sonoma recently. Eating, drinking (Linden St beer and Sodacraft soda), horseshoes, tours of a Bi-Rite garden, lasso lessons, dancing… I could have driven up with a friend, but I figured– why not bike? The most direct route would have been through San Rafael and up on the 37 to the 121, but after looking at the excellent Marin Country Bike Coalition map’s warnings of missing shoulders and reading a few online posts about those road segments, I decided I was willing to add 9 extra miles and some hills to ride via Fairfax / Nicasio / Petaluma: ...

Circle JR Ranch, Sonoma

Three weeks of solo bike touring and camping, across 600+ miles of The Netherlands and Belgium. Riding over massive man-made dikes, on paved bike paths cutting through dark forests and rural farm fields (where I might not see another person for hours), to Trappist breweries and old towns, along canals, on muddy back roads and unsigned border crossings, and to a bonfire with a band playing under a rusted crane. ...

Some animal nibbled at my panniers overnight (earlier in the trip)! After that, I moved all snacks to a suspended-above-ground bag and didn’t have further problems.

Yesterday I biked for about 13 hours (with breaks), maybe 200km (120 miles), twice as far as I’d planned. The weather was perfect, I had a tailwind, navigating was easy, and I was in a euphoric cycling state of mind. So when I reached my planned campground around 4, I kept going… and only when it started to get dark after 10 (solstice, moderately high latitude) did I think about stopping. I even found myself idly thinking about biking all night because I was in such a good mood– but fortunately common sense took over before I did something that crazy (I was out of food and water, only had a small light, canal ferries wouldn’t have been running). It’s a sickness, I tell you!

Laying on my back somewhere in The Netherlands, surrounded by vocal evening birds. Not a bad end to a Thursday.

Bivy tent camping near Kijkduin by the ocean

riding in holland right now! long-distance bike path LF1, dunes, a few hundred feet from the North Sea

A few weeks ago, I did something I’ve wanted to do for years– a bike camping trip to Point Reyes, self-supported (carrying everything, no car support). I wanted to camp in Point Reyes National Seashore itself rather than nearby in Samuel P Taylor, to be somewhere more remote that wasn’t drive-in. I picked Sky Camp (based partly on this SFgate article), managed to get two nights reserved, and we ended up with a hardy group of 11 (friends, friends of friends, riders from last year’s SF RAGBRAI contingent). ...

Point Reyes bike camping: view from Sky Camp (a rare fog-free evening)