Just kidding.  Check out Jonathan Mauss’s great report on a trip he did with his family and two others recently on Bike Portland.

Rogue and reckless gang member descending Camino Alto into Larkspur. Photo by Dustin Jensen.

This past weekend a local bike gang known by their seemingly innocuous name ‘the ragamuffins’ did a quick overnight trip to Samuel Taylor (redwood!) state park north of Fairfax, about a 30 mile ride from SF.*

Dustin Jensen, pro bike photog and sfwiggle blogger, captured the ride in a colorful and dynamic photoset.  Curious what chill, laid-back, post-car camping in the bay looks like?  Watch the slideshow of Dustin’s photos.

* Larkspur ferry shortens the ride and knocks out some climbing.  The park has hike-and-bike campsites which are only $3 and require no reservation, and no one turned away.  If you’re not into cycling or not able to, take the bus right to the park and still use the super cheap and convenient hike-and-bike sites.  Full details on the trip available in the print version of Post-Car Adventuring, available here, here, and here for a mere $5.

SF bicycle gang known as 'ragamuffins' preparing to raise hell in Marin. (Panhandle, Golden Gate Park) photo by Dustin Jensen.

Twelve bikes fill a parking space outside the Papermill Creek Saloon in Lagunitas. A short, trail ride away from camp, the saloon is a great place to stop on your way. Photo by Dustin Jensen.

Just saw this ad on craigslist.  This is a great deal, two bike friday new world tourist bikes (what the authors of this blog use on many trips) for only $1000.  For sale in Berkeley.  More on folder bikes and post-car adventuring coming soon.  Just back from a great trip to Samuel Taylor Park in Marin where we met some other great post-car adventurers from SF.

Transit and Trails

We’re excited about this new resource, available both online in a web 2.0 format and as a hard copy map.  More context, commentary, and reflection coming soon.

With the recent heat-wave, we were on the look out for a cool lake dip not far from home.  We found a great spot just a few miles from downtown Oakland, and about a fifteen-minute bike ride from Rockridge BART in Oakland–Lake Temescal.  The trip to the lake can be made by a slightly uphill bike ride from Rockridge Bart (1.6 miles) (route map) or by AC Transit bus 59 (see map insert).  Sunny beach, chilly but swimmable water; great place for kids in a roped-off shallow area, or more serious swimming in a sizeable section of the lake.  Lifeguard on duty.  See their site for more details.

snapshot from the Bay Area Open Space Council's Transit & Trails Map.

link moved to http://postcar.blogspot.com

Here’s a quick and dirty itinerary a few friends and
I had to scrap for a different one for a trip we’re
taking to Pigeon Point Lighthouse for New Years.
Pigeon Point’s all booked up for the 31st, you can try and find a nice spot at  Butano State Park, a few miles inland from HWY 1, close to Pigeon Point and An(~)o Nuevo State Park.  Butano used to have hiker-biker campsites, but appears to have discontinued them.  I’m not sure if this is a seasonal thing.  Will investigate and post when I learn more.

The PDF doesn’t specify, but once you get to San Jose Diridon, you can take a Caltrain back to the Peninsula or SF (anytime before 9pm) or catch
the Capitol Corridor to the East Bay.

Hot off the presses, the Zine/Book version of the blog is now available!

The book is available at these San Francisco stores (in many more stores soon, some outside SF, check back):

Modern Times Bookstore (Valencia and 20th)

The Green Arcade (Bookstore) (Market @ Gough)

Needles and Pens (16th and Guererro)

You can also order books online at the press website, postcarpress.org.

The zine/book features five trips, including Mt. Diablo State Park, Yosemite, West Marin hikes, Lake Tahoe, and Big Sur. In addition to a different medium, we’ve cleaned up the information and images for each trip from those given on the blog. The book is printed on a heavy card stock, each trip printed on a single sheet (front and back), about postcard size, and the binding is a functional screw post that enables you to rearrange the order of the pages or take one card with you on a trip without having to take them all. We’re pretty excited about the design, and have put a lot of time into both the functionality and aesthetics of the book. We plan to create and release additional volumes, including additional trips in the near future–in the meantime the book has something both for the novice and experienced post-car adventurer.

Be in touch if you have any questions. You can reach us here.

A jpeg of the first page.

Front of Mt. Diablo trip profile in the book

Come visit us near the intersection of Montgomery and Jackson Streets.  Friday, September 19th.

Rock City, just above Live Oak Campground, at sunset.

trip profile:
bart + bike
sf –> Mt. Diablo (biking (ascending, descending), hiking, camping, etc.)
easy overnight trip

starter kit:
Bart sf –> Walnut Creek
Bike

Walnut Creek –> mt. Diablo

Description:
It’s summer in sf and it’s foggy and cold (relatively speaking) — this trip is great for an easy night or two away from the city’s fog. There is a varying degree of climbing involved for this trip – The Live Oak campground is located at 1450 ft, the Junction campground is located at 2200 ft, and the Juniper campground, which is at 3000 ft, is approximately two miles from the summit. The view from the top is pretty spectacular and definitely worth the climb (plus the descent is sweet!). If you want to do minimal climbing on the bike, it is possible to take advantage of the network of trails and hike to the summit from the live Oak Campground.

Transit:
Hop on BART and link up with the Pittsburg-Baypoint line, disembark (approx. 40 minutes from SF bart stops) at the Walnut Creek station. Bike the easy 10 miles to the base of Mt. Diablo (along either Danville Blvd. or the Iron Horse trail) and begin climbing south gate road. (for zoomable map of the exact route, click here).

side trips:
Close to the live oak Campground is ‘rock city’ where there are some really amazing wind caves and rock formations.

Stop by the Rivendell bike shop in Walnut Creek, just a few blocks from the Walnut Creek BART station

particulars:
It gets pretty hot here during the summer — if attempting to do a lot of the climbing it is better to do it early in the morning or later in the evening,

Campground reservations: http://www.mdia.org/spcamp.htm

Every so often you can find a good article in the Chron (archives). Here’s one that has some banal reflections on what it’s like to be in a car whizzing past some cyclists biking up hill, and some ideas for very close trips, Angel Island, etc. Read the article here.

This post has moved to:  http://postcar.blogspot.com/2009/06/cheaper-easier-to-get-to-yosemite.html

I used to use my car-share to hike in the Olema Valley (between Bolinas Ride and Inverness Ridge) and into the Point Reyes wilderness. To get to the trailhead from SF took about an hour at best and cost me at least $50 (plus the $5 bridge toll) if I wanted to hike for more than thirty minutes. Now I pay $4 and take my time. This post describes how you can get around West Marin’s natural and recreation areas quickly and cheaply without a car, using the Marin Stagecoach.

From San Francisco, catch the Golden Gate Transit 70/80 express bus at 7th and Market Sts (on the east side of 7th St near the intersection, this is right next to the Civic Center BART station) or the GG transit #10 bus (runs across Geary Blvd) to the Marin City transit center (trip takes 35 minutes, $3.75) and then catch the Marin Stagecoach shuttle to Mt. Tam, the Tourist Club, Stinson Beach, Bolinas or points in-between (i.e. Pan Toll station, Bootjack picnic area and trailheads) (takes about 20 minutes to Pan Toll, about an hour to Bolinas, free with a transfer from the 70/80 bus or $2 without a transfer).  The buses are really comfortable compared to MUNI and they run on-time.

It’s a quick bike ride to Marin City to catch the stagecoach from SF is you prefer to bike across the bridge. If you want to take your bike on the stage, there are racks that can fit two bikes on the front rack.

If you want to get to Fairfax, Lagunitas, Olema, the Point Reyes Bear Valley Visitor center, or Point Reyes Station, stay on the 70/80 GG transit bus until the San Rafael transit center and catch the northern line of the Marin Stagecoach.  Check schedules and websites for the most up-to-date information.  The stagecoach segments of the trip run more frequently during the summer months.  The GG transit buses run about every 20 minutes or more frequently.

Golden Gate Transit.
Marin County Stagecoach.

Carlos, SF Randonneur and inveterate bike tourist, has a nice write-up with pics and itinerary points at his site of a moderately challenging overnight trip to Point Reyes Sky Camp, here.

Another version of this trip is to bike a couple miles further (on a beautiful descent) down Limantour Road towards the beach and either camp at Point Reyes’ limantour beach campsite, or stay at the Point Reyes Hostel.

8/4/08 note:  The Los Padres national forest is still restricting all access to the wilderness, including the trails described here, and since the fires are still burning, this hike may not be possible until the winter, when Tassajara is closed.  Details.

The Tassajara Hot Springs are an integral part of the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center owned and operated by the San Francisco Zen Center. Tassajara is located in an incredibly mountainous and remote canyon within the Santa Lucia Mountains within the bounds of the Ventana Wilderness, Los Padres National Forest.

While the Zen Center is privately owned and is a private retreat center during many months throughout the year dedicated to meditation and practice by the center’s students, during a number of months in the summer the center is open to the public. (Day use, including use of the baths, an optional class in meditation practice, and access to a creekside coffee and tea stand, runs $20 with a mandatory phone reservation.)

Most visitors make the trip to Tassajara by vehicle, and from San Francisco it is a pretty intensive trip of five hours, largely due to a 14-mile stretch of steep mountain road that must be carefully navigated. The trip suggested here presents a more time and human-energy intensive trip, but one that we think ultimately more fun and interesting. It includes a gorgeous 26 mile bike ride of medium difficulty (from King City) and a medium to difficult hike of seven miles through the Ventana Wilderness that brings you right to Tassajara Creek and the center. If this sounds compelling, details are below.

Maps:

Krebs Santa Cruz Mts. and Monterey County cycling map. (excellent, and very helpful for the trip).
Ventana Wilderness hiking map (or the Los Padres national forest map; not great quality, but best one out there).

Starting from SF/Bay Area:

transit

Take BART to Oakland Coliseum. Amtrak CA Capitol Corridor from OAK Coliseum to San Jose Diridon Station. Amtrak CA Bus leaves ten minutes after arrival in San Jose, can store bikes in the bottom luggage compartments. Driver may give you a little bit of a hard time, but there should always be space and bikes are absolutely allowed to ride unboxed in the storage space of all Amtrak CA connecting coach buses.

Arrive King City.

cycle

Using Kreb’s touring map for this region (Santa Cruz Mts. and Monterey County) bike the 26 miles to Arroyo Seco campground / trailhead via ~4 miles on HWY 101 (use recreation bridge/trail just north of the bridge to cross the Salinas River, as the bridge is narrow and without a berm northbound–Krebs map has this info and shows path–access in San Lorenzo Park). Make left onto Central Avenue. Fantastic, long ag. road. (The laborers and truck drivers on this stretch of road and Arroyo Seco are much more respectful and careful driving around cyclists than the yuppies cruising into the campground / Carmel Valley a little later in the trip.)

(Note: If you arrive in King City in the afternoon, you could bike to Arroyo Seco campground and camp there for the night (requires a reservation) or hike in a little to the wilderness and find a spot to camp for free and without a reservation. If you arrive later on in the evening, you should avoid biking Arroyo Seco road at dusk and camp at the suprisingly nice and verdant campground in King City, just a mile from the Amtrak bus stop (San Lorenzo County Park, on the Krebs map). They don’t have hiker biker campsites, but a ranger we talked to there let us camp and simply pay the day use rate as an ad-hoc hiker-biker rate. Reservations are possible, but tent sites are pretty much always available.)

Make a left on Elm St, heading West into the mountains. Stay on Elm to Arroyo Seco road. Great one-lane bridge. Between King City and the trailhead only 600′ of elevation gain, and no steep parts to speak of.

Follow road and map until arriving at Arroyo Seco. Climb up one steep stretch of road within the campground space, past the campground, you’ll come to the trailhead parking.

on foot.

Hide and lock up your bikes and begin hiking along Indians-Arroyo Seco road (closed to motor vehicles) for about 2 or three miles until you get to the Horse Bridge Trailhead — enter here, cross the bridge and get on the Marble Peak Trail for a mile or two until you get to the Horse Pasture Trail, make a right on Horse Pasture which will take you up and over a ridge to get to Tassajara Creek, past an incredible waterfall and through thousands of poison oak plants (wear long pants, seriously, we got it bad). Horse Pasture is not the most well-maintained trail in the wilderness, though there is a dedicated Ventana Wilderness volunteer trail crew that does work on trails in this area. At the end of Horse Pasture trail, you’ll see a trail sign pointing in the direction of ‘Tea’–follow the trail this way to the center, about a half mile upriver. It’s about a 7 mile hike from the parking lot at the top of Arroyo Seco campground to the center. (We started from King City around 8 am and made it to the center by the early afternoon). Tassajara has no areas for campers, so there are a couple options for the night–you can make a reservation for one of the many kinds of accommodations, some rather expensive, and some cheaper ones at Tassajara; or you can camp, which is what we did, though it does require a little creativity because the canyon is pretty tight and the flat land is mostly occupied by the center’s buildings. Hint: try camping near the start of the Tony Trail’s ascent, a little way from the grounds of the center, over the cool student-built bridge and past the swingset. There are no ‘no-camping’ signs here and as far as we can tell from the FS map, this is forest land where it is legal to camp. No one bothered us, but we also didn’t make a point of asking the center’s staff. If you know of other camping options in the area that would work well or better for people, drop us a line and we’ll revise this. Retrace your steps to your bikes and back to King City, can hike the Tony Trail back to Marble Peak trail if you want to make more of a loop, but watch out for very loose tread on steep hillsides on the Tony Trail.)

(Note that this entire area, including the popular Arroyo Seco campground and the area around Indians road was scorched in the Indians fire complex (May and June 2008). We made this trek just before the fire so conditions may be a bit changed now, and you may want to give the Monterey district ranger station in King City a call to see if they know about altered conditions on the ground).

Richard Masoner posts a great write-up of how to get to Henry Cowell Redwoods’ hiker-biker campsites (only 3$ a night) from pretty much anywhere in the Bay.

Check it out here.

Krebs map detail of the northwest shore of Tahoe.

note: the following post describes a car-free trip we made to tahoe this past summer. getting there this way also works well in the winter — just use the resort shuttles from truckee or south lake tahoe, or tahoe’s ‘TART’ buses to get from the train station to squaw, northstar, etc. see the tahoe transit page for all schedule info: http://www.laketahoetransit.com/home

trip profile:
bike + train + bus
sf –> lake tahoe (biking, hiking, swimming, sailing, camping, etc.)
easy 3 dayer trip with infinite possible variations

starter kit:
Bart sf –> Richmond
Amtrak Richmond –> Sacremento
Amtrak bus Sacremento –> Truckee (or south lake tahoe)
Bike Truckee –> tahoe city

Description:
Although hopping in an SUV, jumping on the freeway, and being stuck in hours of traffic sounded appealing, we decided instead to take the train.

With the bikes lightly loaded we caught the 700am Bart headed towards Richmond. In Richmond we boarded the Amtrak Capitol Corridor train, hung our bikes on the racks and headed to Sacramento where we switched to an Amtrak bus. <<While waiting to load the bus, a seemingly happy-that-we-were-bringing-our-bikes-on-board Amtrak coordinator took pictures of us with our bicycles, explaining that the pictures would be used as a tool to show that bikes are in fact allowed on Amtrak buses; five minutes later we were told by the driver that our bikes probably wouldn’t make it on (meanwhile people load on their 50 lbs suitcases). We’ve come to expect a bit of shit and therefore have decided to invest in folder bikes, but definitely not necessary, we do always get on.>> Arrived in downtown Truckee, ate some lunch and headed the 14 flat miles down hwy 89 into Tahoe city. We initially planned on camping at kaspian (the bicycle campground) but as it ended up there was nothing bicycle friendly about it and after we had set up our tent we were asked to leave. There is plenty of forest service land around to camp on but needed to wake up the next morning and sail in Tahoe city so decided to stay at the William Kent campground,

biking south on hwy 89 out of emerald bay.

Saturday we swam, sailed, and biked around and up to Barker Pass (along Blackwood Canyon road). Sunday we rode hwy 89 along the lake to South Lake Tahoe, where we were to catch the Amtrak bus. This stretch along the west side of the lake is beautiful; snow capped mountains, a bit of climbing, and awesome descents with sharp hairpin turns. We stopped across from emerald bay and hiked a short distance into desolation wilderness, swam in Eagle Lake and headed back out. We hopped on the bus in South Lake Tahoe, transferred to the train in Sacramento, boarded Bart in Richmond and were eating tacos in the mission by 8:30pm.

side trips:
Barker pass, up Blackwood Canyon Road…

particulars:
There consists a bike path much of the way in-between Tahoe city and South Lake Tahoe. Although a bit more hilly and littered with pedestrians, the road is fairly narrow with not much of a berm,

Kelly at 2800' above the Big Sur coast- and fog-line, on Nacimiento-Fergusson Road

transit.

6:52 AM Fremont train from 24th ST BART to OAK, arrives 7:20
7:42 capitol corridor from OAK Colisseum to San Jose, arrive 8:45
9:05 MST express bus from San Jose to Monterey, arrives 11:08

* total bart/train/transit time = a little over 4 hours, only 1.5 hours longer than driving
* bikes on transit: BART, no issues; Capitol Corridor, sufficient rack space; MST 55 express bus, two racks on the front of the bus and room for two more inside in the wheelchair accessible spaces as long as persons with disabilities not using them — drivers have always been good about letting us bring a bike inside when necessary).

cost (one-way) = $3.70 + $13 + $8 = $24.70
(can buy amtrak capitol corridor in advance, but do not have to)

biking
12:00 pm till ? (3:00 – 5:00 depending on stops, speed)
Monterey to Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park (suggested), 30 miles, Hike and Bike site available, does not require reservation, only $5 a person.
(there are other campsites further south if you want to do more riding, i.e. Kirk Creek or Plaskett Creek FS campground (hike-and-bike).

* starting to ride at noon means that this ride will be nicer in the spring and fall when tourist traffic is less intense. be advised that doing this ride during the busy summer season will mean a LOT of traffic (including rented RV’s…shudder..) but it is of course still possible.

on Sunday, the last 55 express bus from the Monterey transit center back to San Jose leaves at 3:17 PM, arrives into San Jose at 5:30 pm, in-time to catch either a capitol corridor train or the Caltrain if headed to points up the SF peninsula or SF (cheaper than the Capitol Corridor if headed to SF).

* tips for the MST 55 express: this is the only leg of the journey where getting your bike on board could be an issue if demand happened to be high for bike space. While there is the possibility of four spaces for bikes on the bus, it might only be two if disabled passengers are riding. You definitely want to be waiting for the bus at the Monterey Transit Plaza, at the FIRST STOP in Monterey, 500 Tyler St, Corner of East Pearl St and Tyler St so that you can get you and your bike in line for the bus. It does depart on time. We’ve done this trip several times with three bicycles and it has worked out each time, but it is important to recognize the risk of being bumped and being stuck in beautiful monterey for an extra day (this would be less likely if you do the trip during the week, but check the schedule for different bus times). There is a hiker-biker site in the middle of Monterey in a nice wooded and elevated campground, Veteran’s Campground, easy to find with a Krebs cycle map (um, in case you get bumped).

this blog has a few implicit aims, obvious from the posts and the title.

to be explicit:  the goal is to provide those who, either by choice or by necessity, do not have a personal automobile, ideas and information for car-free trips to (mostly natural) areas commonly thought be to inaccessible without a personal vehicle.  a blog for would-be weekend car campers, newbie bike tourists, experienced bike tourists, dayhikers, backpackers, etc.  [an intended audience is the large group of urbanites who rarely need and use a personal automobile in the city but continue to own a car because they perceive it it as a necessity for rural and wilderness trips].

we do not and will not be posting trips with laborious car-free itineraries, i.e. a trip that would take 2 hours with a car but 9 hours without one, but rather trips where using transit (and often a bicycle) mean either a faster in-transit time or roughly equal amount of time it would take to travel by car alone.  (i.e. you know that irritating drive through freeway gridlock to yosemite that takes 4 to 5 hours?  you can get there in five hours via Amtrak’s affordable and on-time train + bus route to the park and drink six beers while you’re at it).

the goal is not ideological environmental asceticism and/or anti-car militancy, but pleasure while engaged in environmentally and socially-responsible practices– in-line with what the environmental philosopher Kate Soper has called a ‘hedonistic environmentalism’ where human happiness and comfort is not ground under a radical-Jainist wheel of self-abnegation in the interest of decreasing personal carbon footprints.

*more background and explanation of the project* :

a quick and dirty blog with info on slow and clean adventures.

parallel idea: http://www.momentumplanet.com/features/self-propelled-outdoor-club

From this article:

A key message on the “global oil predicament” from author and public speaker James Howard Kunstler, is the need to start reconsidering the way we travel, and in general our “relationship” to how we get around. He suggests we are entering into the end of the era of spontaneously driving or flying to whatever weekend destination we fancy, and suggests “other arrangements will need to be made.”

The concept of making the journey to the trailhead or summit part of the overall trip might be catching on. Beyond the obvious environmental benefits and perhaps impending necessity, the independence and challenge of this kind of adventure might be motivation enough to inspire more and more self-propelled “trekkies.”

Addy explains that self-propelled adventures make for a unique experience every time, and while it may not be the quickest way to the top of the mountain, he suggests there is an underlying and powerful philosophy behind these kind of trips that embraces the “quality, not quantity” of adventure.