As I mentioned in the previous post, I’m staying another night at Half Moon Bay. My current thinking is that I’ll do the run to San Simeon (or perhaps a little further south) tomorrow, and then try to combine the San Simeon / Santa Barbara and Santa Barbara / Newport Beach days into one day to make up time. That’ll give me the gap day at Newport Beach back, and will let the people who wanted to see the car on the 10th still see it.

I’m having a great time here in Half Moon Bay – the scenery is great, I have a great room / view, and there’s a microbrewery that delivers – what more could one need?

I’m in Half Moon Bay (south of San Francisco). I’ll be staying here for another day. Stay tuned for an update tomorrow.

Update: Half Moon Bay is so beautiful, I decided to stay here another day. At this point I don’t know if I’ll do a double drive one day or use up my August 11th gap day – stay tuned for updates as things develop.

I continued down the 1 from Fort Bragg. Remember that “dangerous curves next 22 miles” sign I mentioned in a previous post? Well, I was greeted with one that said “next 110 miles” upon leaving Fort Bragg. There are loads of switchbacks and hairpin turns, including a great quintuple hairpin in one spot. I think people are stealing the road signs, though, because many of these aren’t marked at all – either that or the locals use this as a way to dispose of tourists…

At one point I was greeted with a sign that said “Pavement Ends 1 Mile”. Apparently part of the road fell into the ocean, so there’s a gravel-and-oil pathway that you’re supposed to take, onto a temporary truss-and-plate bridge. This is a one-lane road with a stop sign and a sign that says “proceed when clear” (but you can’t see to the other end of the one-way zone). No workers in sight. Fortunately, there wasn’t much traffic at this time (for some reason, a lot of rental RV’s take this route). Today’s pictures are from just past this point.

Then it was onto the 101 to come into San Francisco over the Golden Gate Bridge. Then onto Lombard St. and Divisadero St. (that’s the very steep street you see in commercials all the time, with a stop sign at each intersection – cool!).

I was pulled over just before getting on 280 by the SFPD. I think mostly they wanted to know what the car was, and the temporary Oregon plate confused them. Once I showed them my license and insurance info, they had a lot of questions about the car and seemed interested. I told them that at the price an Atom commands, they probably won’t have a problem with kids racing them in the streets. While I was pulled over, several other cars pulled over to see what sort of race car the SFPD had captured. As we wound up blocking the street that led to the on-ramp, we disbanded the party and I headed south.

On out of San Francisco via 280 and the 101, then back onto the 1 (which was recently re-opened after some major landslides). I had decided I would try to stay in Half Moon Bay as it looked nice on the map, and I didn’t want to park the car on the street or in a garage at a SF hotel.

I pulled into the Beach House at Half Moon Bay and got their last room, which was the penthouse suite. Upon seeing the room and the view, I decided to spend an extra day here. Look for another update tomorrow evening.