Our most recent car free vacation was to Half Moon Bay. It took about 2 hours from our home in Berkeley via BART and 2 buses to get there (see specific transit info below). We walked, and loaded up the stroller, and carried backpacks, and used public transit. And we got all the way to a cute little town and the OCEAN!

We actually ended up postponing this trip a few weeks because it turned out that on the original dates we picked there was a lot of rain forecast. These are the kind of things that are pretty important when going car free. Nice weather helps when you are waiting with a toddler and your stuff for the bus.

Another car free consideration is where you can get from the bus – lodging or camping and access to stores and restaurants. Convenient is key – not remote and off the beaten path (that could be fun, if you go prepared! We look forward to trying bike camping when Fern is a little older.) It is amazing how you can get to some pretty wild coastline via bus and a little bit of walking here in the greater Bay Area.

In Half Moon Bay, there are quite a few lodging options right on Main Street which is where the bus goes and where the food stores and restaurants are. We also spent some time at the Half Moon Bay Public Library which is near the little Main Street/downtown area and has a great kids area, bathrooms, and a nice little outdoor patio out back.

The beach is about a 20 minute walk from town – flat and easy but a bit of a walk. There is a campground (Half Moon Bay State Beach) right at the beach where we have stayed on a bike trip before Fern was born. One of the great things about going car free is that you don’t have to have a reservation to get a spot in the bike (or walk) in spaces – and reservations are notoriously hard to get in Northern California Parks.

TRANSIT specifics from Jesse:

To get to Half Moon Bay on public transit we took BART from Ashby to Daly City BART – $4.30 and it took 40 minutes.

At Daly City, we took the SamTrans 110 bus to Linda Mar Park N Ride – $2.00 and it takes about 35 minutes.  The transfer between BART and the bus was timed so the bus left about one minute after we got on board!  The ride on Bus 110 is through suburban neighborhoods which is a little slow but it is interesting to see all the houses and how people do their yards.  At the top of a long hill around Colma you get a great ocean view along the beautiful coast and then you go parallel to highway 1 past beaches.

At Linda Mar Park N Ride (in the city of Pacifica a block from the beach) there is another timed transfer to SamTrans Bus 17 – $2.00 and a 44 minute ride to downtown Half Moon Bay.  Bus 17 goes through the new tunnel that avoids highway 1 that used to go along the cliffs at Devils Slide.  There are still some good ocean views plus a portion of the ride where you slowly circle through some rural neighborhoods.  The last bit is on highway 1 through farms and along the ocean which is pretty.

Overall, the whole trip took about two and a half hours including walking to BART, waiting for transit, riding on transit and making transfers.  All the bus drivers were pleasant. Fern enjoyed looking out the windows and sitting on our laps.  We rolled the stroller right on the BART and the buses so it was fairly easy carrying all the baby stuff.

Going back we took the same buses except that we decided to stop in Pacifica for a few hours to go to the beach, since the beach in Pacific is only a block from the bus stop which is closer than the beach in Half Moon Bay is to downtown Half Moon Bay.

The beach in Pacifica is a crazy surfing scene — everyone from old people to little kids were wearing wet suits and carrying boards.  There are restaurants almost on the beach.  It was a kind of urban crowded beach but even though I like the rural Marin beaches better, Fern had fun in the sand and the waves and sky were beautiful.  Since Pacifica is only about an hour an a half from Berkeley via BART and bus, we might go back to that beach at some point.