After about 2 weeks of nice short days of cycling, watching wildlife, campfires and good company, we arrived in San Francisco. There, we could stay with Erik and Lindsey who we had met in Bolivia and Peru.

They live in the city, so it was a great place for us to get some rest, do a little siteseeing and take care of some necessary things.

Linda’s bike needed some new parts, we had to buy a new computer, we bought some new clothes, sent other stuff home and did some more things. The last weekend there was a carnaval in the neighborhood; an enormous line of beautiful decorated floats, people in beatiful clothing and nice old cars.

When we arrived in the city, Erik was already waiting for us to guide us to his home. Through the Golden Gate Park and criss cross through the city to avoid the huge and steep hills as much as possible. They live in a very nice apartment in a nice neighborhood of the city..

It was a bit of a walk to the tourist area of the city, but it was do-able..

Because we had been in San Francisco before and did all the things tourist do in the city (like visit Alcatraz), we didn’t have to do that anymore. That left us with time to do other things. We needed to find lots of information, take care of a lot of things, buy a lot of stuff and find out about other things.

We did a few things by bike, for example we cycled the famous Lombard street. That’s a very steep street with sharp turns. To get there, we had to go uphill first via a different street. That was not easy, it was a long uphill of 12%! Going down meant a lot of breaking, also because the cars were going very slow.

We also cycled the Golden Gate Bridge. Of course, there was a lot of wind, so we were almost blown off the bridge. And unfortunately we were not alone… Hundreds, maybe even thousands of other people had rented a bike and occupied the bikepath, sometimes causing dangerous situations because most of them never ride a bike.

Via another very steep route we cycled to a viewpoint high above the city. It takes a little efford, but the reward is great! A beautiful view of the city and the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance.

Now we bought everything we needed and did a lot of what we wanted to do, so it’s time to go. We leave San Francisco today. But not on our bikes this time. We’ve rented a car for a week to drive up north to Seatlle and do some sightseeing along the way. We want to take the ferry from Bellingham, a little north of Seattle, to Skagway in Alaska. Then we’ll get back on our bikes, cycle a loop through Alaska and then cycle through Canada to go back to the US.

We decided to do it this way because it’s better to plan our arrival in Alaska. We also hope that we’ll have the best possible weather this way. Besides that, we think we will like the cycling in Alaska and Canada better because we hope to find more adventure there. Now we have more time to spend there.

It also seems smarter to us because of our visa. We have a visa till the end of October and you don’t want to be in Alaska (on your bike and camping) then. So, to avoid getting ‘stuck’ in Alaska before our visa expires because we don’t have enough time to cycle back before winter arrives, we decided to do it this way. Now we can keep cycling till our visa expires.

Thanks, Erik and Lindsey!