China Camp
Every year Box Dog kicks off our bike camping series with a low key worker (and close friends) camping trip. This year we decided to start off at China Camp State Park right outside of San Rafael.
The ride from the shop to China Camp is aprox 25 miles which is a little daunting after a day of work and not quite the daylight hours you’d like. So we planned to all take the ferry out to Larkspur and make the 7 mile ride to the campsite.
While we were all really excited about the trip it became obvious in the days leading up to it that we would have a little bit of wet weather. While the rain is welcome these days it’s still not always the most fun to work and then spend the night potentially getting soaked just to go back to work the next day.
The day of due to circumstance, bad planning, and the impending rain the riders slowly dwindled from our expected 10 to just me and Mariella (a friend of the shop). Everyone else carpooled out to the site.
Even in the drizzle the ride was beautiful. Marin in the springtime after a good rain is lush and looks like some kind of Lord of the Rings daydream. Mariella and I made the quick trip from Larkspur through San Rafael mostly on a nice bike path and then cut through a brief amount of suburban/stripmall/highway on ramp traffic to Point San Pedro Road.
The road goes all the way around the bay coast passing by a small beach and an old brickyard you notice for the giant kiln chimneys before you make a short but challenging ride into the park. The rest of the ride was a welcome site of more of those rolling hills, green lush redwood, bay, and oak, and low salt marshes.
We road into the camp site on a nice wide trail and set up for the night under this beautiful tree with it’s own porthole.
It was a weekend and so even though it was raining there were plenty of people in the campgrounds but we had two whole spacious sites to ourselves. The rain didn’t quite let up but it was surprisingly pleasant out and completely manageable, especially if you were close to the fire.
I was happy to spend another night out with my friends and co-workers out of work and on my bike and I’m so very happy to spend another summer camping with all of you!
Stay tuned to our camping series by following #bdbsummercamp and I hope to see you all out on a ride!