Moochdocking In Montara, CA

If you blink while driving up Highway 1 between Santa Cruz and San Francisco you might miss the quaint San Mateo County coastal town of Montara.

Montara is currently one of our favorite places to visit because it has it all – a beach, mountains, and a 30min drive from everything a city like San Francisco has to offer. But mostly, it has our friends Peter and Jake!!

We had visited them back in 2019 so this wasn’t our first time in Montara. Ever since we got our travel trailer, we’ve been wondering if we would be able to get it into their extra driveway. We finally have the answer!

After Michael’s expert driving skills got us there, we moved in with them and stayed for 2 weeks.

Afternoon walks could initiate directly from their driveway since their house is within walking distance of Montara State Beach and trails through the mountains.

We shared dinner together every night, about half the time eating out and the other half trying to figure out what to do with the CSA produce box.

There are also other pretty towns/beaches within a 5-minute drive. We biked along the beaches lining Half Moon Bay, an epic surfing location.

Moss Beach has a marine preserve and is known for tide-pooling.

Just north is Gray Whale Cove, beneath a section of Highway 1 known as Devil’s Slide. Whales can often be seen migrating close to shore but we didn’t see any.

Highway 1 has a pair of tunnels through Montara Mountain along that Devil’s Slide section that connect the towns of Montara and Pacifica. They were only just completed ~10 years ago and the old road is now a trail with beautiful views of the coastline.

We felt compelled to eat at the Taco Bell in Pacifica because of its patio view.

We also ate at good restaurants, like Sam’s Chowder House. Sam’s is a local favorite for seafood.

After several days of fog, the consensus was that we needed to find some sun. Apparently, if you drive over the hill (Santa Cruz Mountains), you will be in Palo Alto, where it is always sunny and 10 degrees warmer than the coast. We walked at the Arastradero Preserve so that we could justify food/beer from the Alpine Inn.

We also did some new things in San Francisco. This was our 4th time visiting but there was still plenty we hadn’t done before. We took a short scenic boat ride through the Bay to a self-guided walking tour of Alcatraz Island. We found it interesting that Alcatraz only operated as a prison for less than 30 years before it closed due to being too expensive to maintain. After it closed, Native Americans took over and occupied the island before it eventually became a National Park.

Afterward, we went to check on the Pier 39 sea lions. They were still clowns.

We also spent a couple of hours at the Exploratorium, a fascinating hands-on museum that requires much more than a couple of hours.

On our last weekend day, we decided to rent electric bikes and ride over the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito, where we would have lunch. We had a blast on the way over. Then, we started getting messages on our phones that because we “parked the bikes outside the service area, our ride was going to be over”. We decided to ignore these silly messages and finish our lunch. Well, turns out the company could disable the bikes and couldn’t reverse it. So, we had to leave our wheels and get an Uber back over the bridge. So disappointing that this adventure was cut short.

And if biking the Golden Gate Bridge wasn’t exciting enough, the next day we said our goodbyes and survived towing the trailer up Highway 1, through Golden Gate Park, the Presidio, and the bridge.

Next up, is a stay in Sonoma County.