Last weekend we decided we could ride to Big Basin Redwoods State Park, which is basically just on the other side of the Santa Cruz Mountains from here.

So we rode up to Skyline, it was a bit cold here in Sunnyvale, but we broke through a very low hanging cloud cover on our way up, crossed Skyline and had a really breathtaking view over the mountains with really low hanging clouds which covered most of the valleys. Not a good sign for the temperatures down there!

We continued anyways, broke through the clouds on the way down and entered the Big Basin Redwoods State Park - which felt more like a really cold and foggy rain forest that day. Nevertheless, the nature there is really great, taking the loop around 236 to Bolder Creek is really worth it.

One mistake I made was to switch to my summer gloves when we were on Skyline - they have a mesh back which lets in quite some fresh air, so my hands were really cold on the fog later on. I could at least turn on my heated grips while Andrea behind me didn't have those. A bit better suited gloves, but that didn't help much, we were both really cold when we got to Bolder Creek and decided to press on back to Skyline for some warming sun rays.

It was a good ride, but we found out again, that you can have temperature differences easily in the 10 to 15 degree Celsius range between the South Bay and the area closer to the Pacific coast. Next time we throw the jacket liners and some more layers in the top case ...