Blue Ridge

I slept well and I am ready to go do some mountain biking 🚵‍♀️. We now need to go meet Marc who will have 2 Santa Cruz Hightower bikes ready for us. Marc sets us up and has a map ready for us to go do the Tamarancho loop. This loop is a 12.5 km loop with 44 switchbacks. Those switchbacks... Some of them are really technical or very tight. I was not able to do a good third of them. No worries, it's good practice. The trail is fun and not overly difficult. Some scary places where the track becomes very narrow with a big drop. The trick is not to look down as tempting as it may be. I was worried for Ben but he did it like a pro. At one of the intersections there is a picnic table so we stop for lunch. All we were missing were a couple of nice cold beers. I gotta remember to bring some along next time.

After lunch we only have 1km left to get back to our starting point. We could have done the loop a second time in the other direction however my knee and hands are starting to feel it. It's not worth pushing too much and we had great fun with the first loop. We bring back the bikes and head back to our AirBnB.

At the AirBnB we take a couple of beers and snacks and head off to a nearby park to relax and enjoy. We head to Cascade Park which is 10 minutes away, there is a small trek to do to get to a nice spot to have our drink. After the beer we decide to head over to McNears beach in San Rafael. This city is the next one north of Mill Valley. We find a couple of Adirondack chairs and chill there for a while. Upon our return to the car we notice a ticket in our windshield. When we initially arrived there was a booth but no one inside, we thought that it was late enough in the day and that you no longer had to pay. Surprise... We did. On our way out we see a guy that seems to work for the park. We ask for his help. He explains that when there is no one at the both we have to pay the machine. Both Ben and I missed the machine: it’s not obvious when you don't know it's there. The guy is kind to us and said that he would give us a chance and wave the ticket.

For supper we head to an Indian restaurant called Bombay Grill. The place was empty. we were the only customers. The food was really good. I'm glad we gave the place a chance.Read more