Big Basin Bear Creek loop

I enjoy reading books on biking in the SF Bay Area and finding new routes to try. For the labor day weekend, I picked the 57 mile Big Basin loop found in one of the books because it's far enough from where I live to justify riding it on a holiday. It's also long enough but not too long to burn all my energy for partying afterwards! The ride started at the parking lot of a "hidden" small park (Wildwood Park) in Saratoga. It was empty at 8:30am. There was a long climb (~7 miles) immediately. We had no problem doing it since the legs were fresh. After reaching the familiar Skyline Blvd (most rides on the Peninsula end the climb on this road), we started descending into the beautiful Big Basin Redwood State Park. Obviously there were many huge Redwood trees. BBQ made by campers smelled great to us :( Once we turned from Big Basin Way (236) into Bear Creek, it was another long climb. Even though MapMyRide said it's Cat-2 (while the initial climb was Cat-1), we found this actually harder, maybe because our legs were no longer fresh. Finally it got easier when we reached the wineries (Byington, David Bruce) We were too happy and went the wrong way down 35 (Bear Creek Rd.) Fortunately we knew there were more climbs and realize our mistake early and turn back to get back on the other side of 35 (Skyline Blvd), which started very narrow, too narrow for 2-way car traffic! Another 7 mile we reached the submit at 3100 ft and from then on it's all downhill: back to the intersection of Big Basin Way and Skyline Blvd that we reached after the first climb and retraced that climb back to Saratoga. This route is definitely worthwhile to try because of the great scenery and also interesting climbs.