Ferries, trains and automobiles: a somewhat SMART way for Sonoma County to do a weekend in San Francisco

Call me crazy, but for the past year I’d wanted to take the SMART train and Golden Gate ferry to San Francisco.

Readers may remember that last year I wrote about traveling there with my wife, Carol, cruising by motor scooter along the back roads of Sonoma and Marin counties and across the Golden Gate Bridge. We had loved that adventure, and we were ready to try yet another way to get to “Baghdad-by-the-Bay”, as famed newspaper columnist Herb Caen used to call his town.

The wildfires that struck Oct. 9 didn’t change our plans, especially when our home remained safe and the threats of evacuation had passed. If anything, by the third weekend of October I was all the more ready for a break after two weeks of breathing smoke and covering stories in the ashes of Santa Rosa’s Coffey Park neighborhood.

For anyone contemplating a “weekender” jaunt away from Sonoma County - for a Giants game, a concert, a bright-lights-big-city event - what we found venturing forth suggests both potential and some limitations of today’s North Bay public transit system.

We set out on a Friday morning for my maiden passage on SMART. The first challenge we faced was getting to the station. For that, I pulled out my smart phone and opened the Lyft ridesharing app. I’m not tech savvy, but I easily managed to request a ride. Within seven minutes we were seated in the back of a Kia sedan and on our way to the downtown Santa Rosa station. Cost: $11.96.

After stopping for a tasty hot chocolate at nearby Aroma Roasters, we walked past the historic stone train depot and climbed the platform. There we discovered that SMART was offering free rides that day due to the fires (normally the cost is $9.50 to San Rafael using a Clipper Card, which is accepted by all forms of public transportation in this story). A few minutes later the 8:31 a.m. train rolled up, and a highlight of our journey began.

I love train travel. I’m no expert on the viability of SMART, but I can tell you I won’t soon forget that ride. After passing Rohnert Park, we looked out on a thin ribbon of clouds just below the thickets of oak that crown the eastern mountains. Between Petaluma and Novato, we passed among wetlands where birds great and small hovered and glided over and dipped into shallow green waters. Along the route we saw vineyards and ranchettes, farms and grazing lands - most of them unseen from the freeway to our west, and all of them beheld from a fresh vista.

Even passages through cities held my attention. The views might seem forgettable: residents’ backyards with patio sets and doughboy pools, acres of cars parked behind auto dealerships, grain elevators and road construction plants set off with sloping, metal-framed conveyors. Yet even these sights held a welcome change from the usual freeway views. Here were places where neighbors lived and worked. The richness and variety of life emanated from places in the county that we don’t always see. And it was good to get a needed perspective: a reminder of how much remained untouched by fire.

The trained arrived right on time at 9:26 a.m. in San Rafael. We departed and made ready to transfer to another Lyft auto, but this time with a twist. We took advantage of a $5 discount offered by the Marin Transportation Authority for anyone riding to or from a SMART station from Monday through Friday. (The program is slated to be offered for at least six months through March). Another Kia sedan and driver took us quickly from the station to the Larkspur Ferry terminal. Cost with discount: $5.88. There we had a short wait before taking the 10:10 ferry to San Francisco. As with the SMART train, a passenger pays simply by swiping the Clipper Card before a reading device on a stanchion and prepares to board. Cost: $7.50.

Okay, I’m also a sucker for ferries. I still smile to think that North Bay residents can cruise right up to AT&T Ballpark for a Giants game or hop aboard a ferry to join the throngs watching the Blue Angels buzz the bay during Fleet Week.

The ferries make 20 round trips on weekdays, and four on weekends. On this day a sizable throng of travelers for a non-commute sailing boarded the 390-passenger, blue and white catamaran “Napa.” The 35-minute trip gave them plenty of time to get a drink or snack from the bar.

The Napa delivered us at 10:45 a.m. to the San Francisco Ferry Building. Above the iconic clock tower, white clouds obscured much of the sky, but patches of blue poked through. We had officially exited the smoke still discernible to the nose and eye in Santa Rosa.

From the ferry building, a number of hotels stand just a streetcar or cable car ride away in at least three directions. However, our children kindly treated us to a night at the Hyatt Regency, just across the Embarcadero from the ferry building. After checking in, we set out to play tourists.

In San Francisco, can you go wrong striking out in any direction?

On Friday we took a streetcar (fare: $2.50) from the Ferry terminal to Fishermen’s Wharf and ate lunch at nearby Ghirardelli Square in a restaurant overlooking the bay. Next we happened upon the mostly free attractions of the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, including the Maritime Museum, the front section of the Hyde Street Pier and the Visitor Center. The faux-ship architecture and art deco interior of the museum by themselves are worth a step inside. Moreover, the photos, stories and historic vessels around the park offer a treasure trove of memories about the men and women who worked the ships, docks and wharves of San Francisco Bay. Added in was the welcome reminder that another city had rebounded from a great disaster: in San Francisco’s case, the 1906 earthquake, the same shaking that also unleashed a mighty calamity upon Santa Rosa.

Our night ended with dinner and live music off Market Street at a jazz club called Mr. Tipple’s Recording Studio. From there we once more caught a streetcar back to the hotel.

All in all, it was a day to remember. But then, the next day, we had to get home.

The first thing to know about weekend ferries from San Francisco is there aren’t any in the mornings. That actually makes sense. Most weekend ferry travelers are headed into the city, so the early weekend ferries depart from Marin County into SF, not the other way around. But that meant the first passage out of the city, bound for Larkspur on Saturday or Sunday wasn’t until 12:40 p.m. If we were to choose that departure, we wouldn’t get back to the downtown Santa Rosa SMART Station until 2:47 p.m.

We wanted an earlier return home, so we instead caught the 10:08 a.m. Golden Gate route 101 bus about a 10-minute walk from the hotel. The option had much to commend it. The bus was free that day for those going to Sonoma County (again due to the fires); we didn’t need to make any connections; and we were dropped off at the Santa Rosa downtown transit center, only a 30 minute walk from our home. Even so, I was psychologically unprepared for the letdown. Perhaps it was simply because we remained worn out from the past two weeks, and our travels to and around the city Friday had required more exertion than I had realized. Perhaps it was because I’m not as enamored with buses. Or perhaps the reason was that I kept reminding myself this trip was taking me along a familiar stretch of freeway and the travel time - 2 hours and 39 minutes - could have been cut in half if I had driven my own car.

Regardless, the bus delivered us safely to downtown Santa Rosa, and the walk home did me good.

Would we take this trip again? Perhaps we will, but likely not until SMART extends its tracks to a new station near the Larkspur ferry terminal, now scheduled for early 2019.

The extension would remove the need for an extra transfer and make it easier to take the train and ferry both ways, perhaps even with a return trip on a weekday when more ferries and trains operate than on weekends.

Such a trip isn’t for everyone. But we have yet to run out of things to enjoy in San Francisco. The city by the bay still glistens. And sometimes it’s worth the effort to see that skyline shine from a different vantage point.

You can reach Staff Writer Robert Digitale at 707-521-5285 or robert.digitale@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @rdigit.