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Over Tioga Pass to Yosemite National Park! The road was under construction and parts were stop and wait traffic backed up the steep roads. Not too fun on a motorcycle but with this scenery like this you couldn’t pick a better place to be in a traffic jam.
One of the alpine lakes at the top of the pass.
Back into California and into desolation along the eastern border. I was a bit surprised how fiercely the Californians protect their crops even out here in the middle of desolate nowhere. We’d crossed the border in 5 places now and had to go through 3 checkpoints to comfiscate any fruits or vegetables. Only the Lake Tahoe crossings didn’t have any which would’ve required a check point in the middle of a town. I heard from a coworker that the guards were not to happy that they had a stick sitting on their dash that the kids had found while getting gas in Arizona and it wound up in the car. Wouldn’t want some contraband like a twig making it into California! There had been a line at all the checkpoints but thankfully they waved the motorcycles through each time. Ironically we had been carrying roadside plums and cherries in the bag just a week earlier.
They really have you by the short hairs if you end up needing gas out here, ouch! The only gas has to be trucked in long distances around the long mountain chain, the short ways to civilization through Death Valley or through Yosemite do not allow trucks. I should have waited, we passed another station inside Yosemite about 40 miles away and it was 80 cents cheaper, the gas there comes from the coast the short way.
Mono Lake is a super saline basin lake like the Dead Sea outside Yosemite on the east enterance.
One huge hunk of obsidian. This is the biggest obsidian bomb I’ve ever seen.
Lake Tahoe, not many pics from this day. We superslabbed it most of the way through central CA and there was not much to see except traffic.
On to Reno! I had originally wanted to come through Reno first then go up to Lake Tahoe and camp there, but with our shortcut we ended up at the lake first and Cece still wanted to go down the mountain to check out Reno instead of bypassing it.
Cece had never been to any place like this before and was fascinated by the spectacle. Her pictures as we cruised around town.
It’d been at least a week since I thought my bike was a dual sport cruiser and attempted to take it down somewhere it had no business being. What sort of an adventure would this be if we only stuck to the pavement. We were attempting to get to a hidden valley of waterfalls and ferns up steep rock faces. Yeah not a good idea with this much weight on the bike, the road was good but in spots washboarded up to the frame and we got beat to death. Not to mention the trucks flying through here at 50 mph while we were going 5 at best, note the dust.
One of the Redwoods NP visitors centers
Now thats a saw!
More playing on the beach
Down the coast to the coastal redwoods in CA. We stopped by this privately run redwoods park because it had been advertising its ski lift through the tree tops for the last 50 miles.
The famous anatomically correct Babe the blue ox. Paul Bunion had a speaker somewhere and a guy hidden in the building with cameras to talk to visitors, the hand waves a few degrees.
These foxgloves outside were planted but this is what was growing thick up and down all the highways wild in Washington
It had taken us 3 days to get across Oregon when I had only budgeted 1 or 2 days. All of my friends from the area told me months in advance to avoid the 101 at all costs around the 4th of July and they were right! They said campgrounds would be booked months in advance as well as all motel rooms because the coast is where everyone in the state tries to vacation. Unfortunately due to time arangements to be in Washington when we were we ended up being here at the worst possible time. I figured we’d just blast across Oregon and miss all the crowds and try to make it to California as fast as possible, boy was I wrong.. Traffic was so bad that in a day of motoring we barely made it 60 miles one day and had our only motorcycle accident the next. It took much longer to get across Oregon than we anticipated so we didnt get to stop to see as many things as we wanted, but at least the scenery was pretty good. Maybe we need to come back another time at a better season. Not too many pics because we kept trying to push on and make up lots of lost time.
Further down the road a view of the OR coast just north of CA.
We hiked back up to where our bike was parked and there was our helmets sitting on the sidewalk next to the bike, What the hell? Someone had been messing with the bike! We ran over and a guy sitting in the shade came up to us and told us what had happened, they had backed into the bike with their SUV and knocked it over @#$% Both of our helmets were dinged from falling off the seat
My Yellowstone bottle had taken the brunt of the fall, I’m so glad none of the bike ended up like this.
Only body damage, a nicked fender. Damnit I just fixed that! I had another one in the exact same place untill our wreck when the insurance replaced the whole fender.
Great now Both turn signal lenses are broken, one from each SUV encounter. The 101 along the Oregon coast is awesome, there was a lot of light houses. We were so far behind schedule but we had to see at least one of them.
We timed it just right at the peak of low tide and got to explore the tide pools along the beach.
By the time the air museum closed and kicked us out it was getting late, we had to turn back to Tillamook Oregon and find a place to stay. Ok, mom & pop place with apartments on the upper floor and ice cold unheated pool $70, big improvement from the gouging the night before in Seaside. Cece had been wanting crab for days, we had to get some now before we leave the coast. Guy at the front desk of our motel recommended a nice place a ways north of Tillamook overhanging a cliff right on the ocean that had live lobster and dungenous crab. That thing was bigger than she was, HUGE!
I went with something a little more tame, seafood pasta.
She thought this was loads of fun LOL
I’m a big engine guy, I could have spent days in this place looking through everything. I had to go out through the rail yard to get a closer look at this thing. A working one of these was going up and down a tourist railway along the coast, since it took us all day to ride 50 miles it passed us a bunch of times. I’ve never seen a steam engine in this configuration, it looks like a huge Moto Guzzi.
Its a giant V Twin under the boiler with an open crank like the old hit and miss engines were. The hit and miss ones were like this for easier access for maintenance and lubrication, but got more dirt contamination and faster wear so they needed more maintenance…
Open drive, yikes! This obviously is from the time when railway safety was self policed 😉
Rolls Royce Merlin |
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