Wednesday, May 28, 2008
San Jose, CA to Berkeley, CA
49 miles (4320 total miles)
Today was a different sort of day than we've had in a while (since the Los Angeles area) - we went through cities all day long. We started in San Jose with a nice, cool, somewhat cloudy outlook and meandered over to Mission Boulevard where we were most of the day. San Jose was pretty nondescript where we spent the night and continured that way for a while, but the downtown was quite picturesque. There was a light rail system that went down the middle of the street with beautiful landscaping along it, very modern and clean looking. There were also some impressive buildings, including the San Jose Museum of Art with a very colorful statue in front of it.
Outside of San Jose, we passed through several other towns - Milpitas, Fremont, Niles, Union City, Hayward, San Leandro, Alameda, and Oakland - before arriving at Berkeley. Most of the towns were very built up and had some lovely parts - mostly downtown - and some not so lovely ones. Between Fremont and Union City, we came to the Mission San Jose, the site of the 14th mission of the original 21 set up by the Spaniards. The original mission had been destroyed in an earthquake and rebuilt later.
We arrived at Shane & Sky's home in Berkeley at 3:45, having biked 48.7 miles in almost 5-1/2 hours of bike time. We enjoyed a wonderful dinner topped off by ice cream at one of their favorite ice cream parlors nearby. We expect to stay here a week, exploring Berkeley and San Francisco with Shane and Becca, Pat's other niece who lives in San Francisco. We're looking forward to a good rest, at the almost half-way point of our trip, and an interesting visit in an exciting area of California, as well.
San Jose, near the south end where we spent the night |
The San Jose Museum of Art - an old part... |
and a more modern part, with a colorful statue in front |
Another interesting building in downtown San Jose |
A mural - note the light rail tracks in front |
A light rail train comes down the street |
The trains all seemed to have 2 cars like this one |
A large new subdevelopment on the north end of town |
We saw (or heard) several planes coming in and out of the San Jose Airport |
Entering Milpitas, we see a bit of the surrounding hills again |
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Another light rail train going overhead |
Nice plantings and decorative street lights in the median strip |
Large new housing developments in Milpitas |
Going over a major railway and a creek |
At the south edge of Fremont, another good view of the hills |
Beautiful landscaping along the road |
And large housing developments across the road from the hills |
We come to the historic Mission San Jose area |
This is the site of the Ohlone College as well |
The entrance to the mission shop |
The mission, with one of the old El Camino Real bells |
A plaque describing the history of the mission |
Ruined old walls of the mission |
Beautiful plants in front of the mission |
Palm trees line the road north of the mission |
The Alameda Creek, near Niles |
The Vallejo Mills Park outside of Niles |
We saw some unusual cloud patterns later in the day |
Pretty street lighting in San Leandro |
An old stone bridge |
Shops along the downtown area |
One of several street flags |
An interesting tower around Alameda |
Characteristic shops in Alameda |
A church and houses |
An elaborate Indian restaurant |
And a Mexican restaurant |
Lake Merritt in Oakland |
A fountain in Lake Merritt |
Interesting buildings in Berkeley... |
Noah's Art... |
and the Crepevine Restaurant |