We decided to have a family biking outing on this Memorial holiday. The first challenge came from my daughter: she refused to ride her undersized 18" bike anymore. So her mom got on the Craigslist immediately and we struck a deal within 2 hours. That's probably the only event without delay for the whole day :P After loading up six bikes (yes, including this "new" used 24" bike that the new owner was going to enjoy for the whole day), we drove down to our first stop: Santa Cruz downtown. The traffic was not so bad and it took us about an hour (15 min more than usual?) to get there and park. We're actually not as familiar with the area as we thought since we usually went straight to the Boardwalk and the beach. Just when I was trying to feed the parking meter, the shopkeeper went out from the store near it and stopped us. He pointed out to us the sign and it actually listed Memorial day as one of the free parking day :) Very nice of him! Next, we saw a Walnut Avenue Cafe with a fairly large crowd outside, which was a sign for good food (and also for long wait) and indeed the wait was 45min-1hr. So we headed to the famed Hoffman's Downtown (which I originally found on Yelp) It was on the popular show Restaurant Impossible in 2011 (in which the expert from Food Network helped renovated the place and transformed the business and become the "selling point" of the place) We found the food and service not as bad as the comments said in Yelp. I liked the music played (jazz), the paintings on the wall (some portrayed musicians playing jazz), the board with a flow chart for choosing the right wine, the free scone, the pancake/waffle and most importantly, the short wait (15 min) Then we had a quick post-meal walk around the interesting downtown (heard some live jazz, which is not surprising as jazz is big in Santa Cruz. Kuumbwa Jazz Center, where big names play often, is right there) After another 45 min of driving, we arrived at the starting point of our bike route: the parking lot next to the mall with Sports Authority (and behind Costco, not the one for Costco customer though) on Metz Avenue in Seaside (it's the name of the city which is of course on sea side :P) There is a Target nearby too, which would be a good place to stock up food/water at the last minute.
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| View of the Pacific Ocean from the Lovers point |
The two streets, Metz Avenue and Tioga Ave, actually connects two sections of paved bike path of the
Monterey Bay Coastal Trail. At the top of the mini-climb up Tioga, there's the entrance to the paved bike path towards Monterey. This rolling section went along Sand Dunes Dr and ends with a 180-degree turn. It's all flat after this. The path (which intersects with many local streets and need to cross carefully) went past the following landmarks: the Naval Postgraduate School, the Wharf, the Cannery Row, the Aquarium and we ended our ride at the
Lovers point (where there were many tall rocks for your Kodak moments) It was 6pm when we got back to the car and the highways were so packed with holiday traffic that it took us 3 hours to reach Cupertino from Seaside :( Still, it could have been worse if we (1) chose to start at the Cannery Row as originally planned. The parking was not free either! We would have started 30 minutes later and needed to add at least that much to the above drive time for the trip back. (2) took Hwy 1 all the way to Santa Cruz and Hwy 17 out of it instead of the short-cut, Soquel San Jose Road, which BTW looks like a
fun road biking route.
At the end of the day, it was all about great scenery and fun ride. Mission accomplished!
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