Well, it's Sunday morning, and I've been a slacker. It's been a great few days with my VROC friends. A nice ride, a lot of visiting and laughs, and of course too much eating and drinking. I'm headed out for Spokane, Washington this morning to see my cousin Jim and his wife Kari, and we're going to be riding to Whitefish, MT on Monday, and on to Glacier National Park on Tuesday. We decided, after talking to the folks at Glacier, that we're going to go ahead with our plans. We may not get to see all of the areas of the park, but the area is beautiful anyway, so it won't be a total loss. I may have to make a repeat visit on another trip in the future.
I just wanted to check in, and I'll try to get some photos from my time in Mountain Home posted this evening or tomorrow. I really didn't take many except on our ride to Featherville on Friday. I've been a slacker with the camera, too! I'll try to steal some from the VROC rally from the many posts on my Facebook feed, lots of people were really busy with their cameras!
Sunday, July 26, 2015
Thursday, July 23, 2015
Ely, Nevada to Mountain Home, Idaho
Day 13 of my adventure, and a nice ride from Ely, Nevada to Mountain Home, Idaho for another VROC rally. I took my time getting out of Ely, since I knew I only had about 340 miles to cover. I caught up the blog this morning, and didn't leave until 10 a.m. Maybe a mistake considering the weather in the area, but it was a good ride all day, until about 20 miles from my destination. Seems to be the story of my journey, dry until just before arrival.
It seems that Ely is the "big town" on the Great Basin Highway (US 93). The next gas was at Wills, Nevada, and after that at Twin Falls, Idaho. I'm sure glad I have a large gas tank on the Gold Wing! I can get 200-240 miles on a tank; my Nomad before this only got 140 on its best day. It was 125 miles from Ely to Wills, and another 125 to Twin Falls. No wonder there aren't many smaller bikes on this road.
You're probably tired of seeing the desert scenery, but I am continually fascinated by it. I don't know why I haven't been hammered by rain, but it seems the storms don't like to follow the highway. Or, I have a guardian angel :-) I know there are plenty of prayers going up for my safe travels, so I like to believe someone is listening. The storms were all around me again, and made for some really beautiful skies over the desert.
This was on the northern edge of Ely as I left town. The clouds are back!
Well, maybe not sunny, but just not dropping any wet stuff would be good...
A long, straight road. One might think you would be bored with such a straight road, but the scenery keeps me entertained. And I get a lot of time to have a good talk with myself :-)
There was a really neat rest area out in the middle of nowhere. This was a stop on the Pony Express route. I took photos of the placards describing the establishment of the Pony Express and how it worked. Very interesting! I hope if you double click on the photos, you can read it too.
A pretty cool rest area!
This is a marker of what once was the Lincoln Highway (the first highway system).
As I said, the rain was all around. I'm glad it didn't get me, but it sure was pretty to watch.
Hoping those white, puffy clouds don't turn black.
Hmmm, they're looking kind of angry.
It was clearing, so I thought I was out of the woods. Dodged the bullet for another day.
This was a little canyon on the way out of Twin Falls, Idaho. I sure didn't expect this!
A fascinating sky.
The rain finally caught up with me about 22 miles from Mountain Home, then tapered off. After I arrived at the hotel, got checked in and was ready to move my bike around to my room, it started again. That kiboshed the idea of getting to Wal Mart, so maybe I'll get that done in the morning. There are several VROCers here already, so the party has started!
I'll try to keep up the blog this time, getting behind is very time consuming. I have several errands to do in the morning, including Wal Mart, a load of laundry, the little liquor store... you know, the essentials! I'm hoping there is a local ride planned, but no one I talked to this evening was aware of anything. This is one of the "loosely planned" rallies :-) Ride, eat, drink, visit. It's always a good time!
More tomorrow (oops, I guess that's today!). I'm falling asleep again, time for lights out. Good night!
It seems that Ely is the "big town" on the Great Basin Highway (US 93). The next gas was at Wills, Nevada, and after that at Twin Falls, Idaho. I'm sure glad I have a large gas tank on the Gold Wing! I can get 200-240 miles on a tank; my Nomad before this only got 140 on its best day. It was 125 miles from Ely to Wills, and another 125 to Twin Falls. No wonder there aren't many smaller bikes on this road.
You're probably tired of seeing the desert scenery, but I am continually fascinated by it. I don't know why I haven't been hammered by rain, but it seems the storms don't like to follow the highway. Or, I have a guardian angel :-) I know there are plenty of prayers going up for my safe travels, so I like to believe someone is listening. The storms were all around me again, and made for some really beautiful skies over the desert.
This was on the northern edge of Ely as I left town. The clouds are back!
I see blue! This gave me great hope for a sunny day.
Well, maybe not sunny, but just not dropping any wet stuff would be good...
A long, straight road. One might think you would be bored with such a straight road, but the scenery keeps me entertained. And I get a lot of time to have a good talk with myself :-)
There was a really neat rest area out in the middle of nowhere. This was a stop on the Pony Express route. I took photos of the placards describing the establishment of the Pony Express and how it worked. Very interesting! I hope if you double click on the photos, you can read it too.
A pretty cool rest area!
This is a marker of what once was the Lincoln Highway (the first highway system).
The dirt road behind is the Pony Express trail.
As I said, the rain was all around. I'm glad it didn't get me, but it sure was pretty to watch.
Hoping those white, puffy clouds don't turn black.
Hmmm, they're looking kind of angry.
It was clearing, so I thought I was out of the woods. Dodged the bullet for another day.
This was a little canyon on the way out of Twin Falls, Idaho. I sure didn't expect this!
A fascinating sky.
The rain finally caught up with me about 22 miles from Mountain Home, then tapered off. After I arrived at the hotel, got checked in and was ready to move my bike around to my room, it started again. That kiboshed the idea of getting to Wal Mart, so maybe I'll get that done in the morning. There are several VROCers here already, so the party has started!
I'll try to keep up the blog this time, getting behind is very time consuming. I have several errands to do in the morning, including Wal Mart, a load of laundry, the little liquor store... you know, the essentials! I'm hoping there is a local ride planned, but no one I talked to this evening was aware of anything. This is one of the "loosely planned" rallies :-) Ride, eat, drink, visit. It's always a good time!
More tomorrow (oops, I guess that's today!). I'm falling asleep again, time for lights out. Good night!
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
Wednesday morning, and I'm still trying to get caught up. I figured out why my camera is eating batteries so quickly... I'm taking a gzillion pictures! I spent a couple of hours last evening culling and deleting the fails and duplicates (I usually snap more than one on the move, since I never know what I'm getting until I review the photos), and was too sleepy to blog by the time I got through all of that. So, today's post starts with Monday's ride from Santa Cruz to South Lake Tahoe.
An early morning beach volleyball game
Up the road, another lighthouse. I believe this is a naval facility. My California friends will set me straight if that's not correct :-)
I'm not sure what this is, I didn't see any signs, but it's neat nonetheless.
I stopped at the famous Cliff House for a delicious lunch in San Francisco. I had a wonderful shrimp and crab Louis salad... yum! Some photos from the cliff.
A cool totem pole in the parking area
I think there were more pedestrians than cars on the Golden Gate Bridge. Riding from south to north, there is really no good place to stop and get a good photo of the bridge. I was going to stop at the vista point on the other end, but traffic was backed up on the ramp to get to it, and there were people everywhere. I just didn't feel like wrestling the Gold Wing through that parking lot. Slow speed parking lot maneuvers are not my friend on a 900 lb., fully loaded bike.
I tried to get a good shot of the bay while exiting on the other side, but traffic was crazy and the shot was sort of behind me. Oh well.
Then into Sonoma Valley. Many beautiful wineries here, and grapes growing everywhere. A wine tasting would have been nice, but then riding may have been a bit treacherous.
Roses lined the fields of grapevines. I can't resist taking photos of roses :)
On in to Sacramento. I-80 E was just about stopped, and my camera was malfunctioning, so I got off the highway when I saw a Wal Mart to check the camera and buy a new one if necessary. Fortunately I was able to coax the shutter to fully close, so I didn't have to replace it. Since I was pretty close to North Highlands at that point, I decided to just ride through old Sacramento instead of getting back on the highway. I'm still not willing to split lanes. I think that's an acquired skill that I haven't acquired living in Georgia, and I'm really not wanting to end up in a California hospital on this trip.
Riding the surface streets was going fine until I reached a detour on Roseville Road that really didn't tell me which way to go - just an "End Detour" sign. Of course my GPS wanted to take me back down that road. So I changed the GPS back to travel highways and got back on I-80 E, and crawled for a while before it opened up. That adventure added about an hour to my ride, and it was HOT. Ugh.
Anyway, the whole reason for the jaunt through Sacramento instead of around it was to get to North Highlands to see my childhood home. My parents bought this house new in 1960, and we lived there until 1967 when my dad got transferred to Cape Kennedy in Florida. I remember this house with a beautiful lawn, a wooden trellis in front of the porch with passion flower vines, and of course no iron gates. Glad I wasn't here when those became necessary! Now the house is 55 years old, and though run down a bit, is still one of the better looking houses on the block. My dad installed the extra concrete on the left side of the driveway, and it's still in perfect condition. He also put concrete down the left side of the house behind that fence, and enlarged the patio in the back. My mom was an avid gardener, and in the back there were redwood enclosed flower beds all the way around the privacy fence, with concrete mower strips in front. Dad was good at making things easy to maintain :-) The house and neighborhood all looked so much smaller than I remember, but then I lived there from ages 5 to 11. I guess everything looked bigger then. This is a 4-bedroom, 2-bath house. The area has grown, and though I recognized some street names, the only other thing I saw from my time here was the old elementary school. It's seen better days too.
Enough nostalgia, on to South Lake Tahoe. I easily found US 50 E, and cruised my way through the rest of the day. That's a very nice highway, very scenic and lots of fun twisties. Unfortunately camera battery and the lateness of the hour prevented much in the way of photos, so I only got this one on the way there. Lake Tahoe, with the little airstrip in the foreground.
I checked into the Lodge around 8:30 p.m., and after that wonderful lunch at the Cliff House, decided a protein bar on the balcony would be dinner. I spent a couple of hours out there working on photos, and got up early on Tuesday to update the blog through Sunday.
A few early morning shots from the balcony. An early morning kayaker paddling out.
Just before sunrise
The sun's up!
And out come the vacationers. I overheard the mom telling the kids... "now we're going to have a good day today, no picking on each other." Sounds familiar from my childhood :-)
It was a quaint little room at the lodge, very rustic.
The guard bear in front of the lodge. I think he had bikers for breakfast! Zoom in on his tummy :-) I'd better get moving before he's ready for lunch!
After a hearty breakfast at the restaurant next to the lodge, I decided to backtrack about 40 miles of US 50 to get some pictures and enjoy those twisties one more time :-) It added 80 miles and a couple of hours to my day yesterday, but was totally worth it. I exhausted the first camera battery pretty quickly. I'll try to exercise some restraint in the number I post. Just beautiful scenery!
The sign out front says "Welcome to Kyburz" then "Now Leaving Kyburz" :-)
So now I'm back to the lake and headed north and east toward Ely, Nevada, my stop for the night. About 345 miles to go for the day. I got out of the Tahoe area just in time, the rain clouds were building. There was rain all around me all day, but the highway led me around the storms for the most part, just a couple of sprinkles until about 15 miles outside of Ely. The elevations went from 3,000 to 7,500 feet, so the temperature varied greatly all day. I finally stopped before Ely and put on my rain jacket (mostly because I was cold), and got into a light rain on my way into town. A couple of guys on sport bikes staying at the same motel were an hour or so ahead of me, and said they got hammered for about two hours riding the same route. They were washing their bikes when I got here. I cleaned the windshield. The bike is filthy, but I'm waiting until this evening when I land in Mountain Home, Idaho, and will be there for a few days to make the clean bike worth the effort.
My parents spent many weekends at Harrah's back in the 60's, both in Tahoe and Reno. That was their "getaway from the kids" time. Otherwise, all vacations were pretty much to visit family.
Headed out of town.
I tried to get some photos of the east side of the lake on the way out of town (on the Nevada side), but there was so much stuff built up around it, it was difficult to get a good shot. I got 1.
Clouds are starting to build.
Behind me - a couple of over the shoulder shots :-)
The roads are LONG out here in the desert.
Rain all around
Behind me again.
I checked my odometer when I took this one. Those mountains are 15 miles away.
And more rain out there... I've managed to stay cool and dry so far :-)
This is the one that finally got me on the way into Ely, but just on the back side of the storm. It had obviously rained hard in Ely, but I was far enough behind the storm to only get a light rain. Yay for me!
And that's the point where my camera battery died yesterday, so no more photos. I was going to find somewhere to go to dinner, but once in my room I just didn't feel like going out again. So I made a drink, put my feet up, and sorted through pictures. Later I had a pizza delivered for dinner, and of course fell asleep before I could get any blogging done. But I'm all caught up now!!
Headed for Mountain Home, Idaho today, for another VROC rally. This one is our annual wandering rally that is held in different locations every year; expecting a good turnout, including some friends from back east. It should be fun! I also have an appointment to put new tires on the bike on Saturday. I'll be wasting some tire life, but I don't think they'll make it home and this is my last long stop on the trip, so better safe than sorry. Gotta find a Wal Mart too, I need to get another battery or two, and some Fresca! More later!
I started the day by riding by the area where I had dinner the evening before, since it was too dusky to get good photos at the time. The lighthouse sits at the point at the entrance to the little harbor here in Santa Cruz, and there's a decent size beach recreation area there as well.
An early morning beach volleyball game
Up the road, another lighthouse. I believe this is a naval facility. My California friends will set me straight if that's not correct :-)
I'm not sure what this is, I didn't see any signs, but it's neat nonetheless.
I stopped at the famous Cliff House for a delicious lunch in San Francisco. I had a wonderful shrimp and crab Louis salad... yum! Some photos from the cliff.
A cool totem pole in the parking area
I think there were more pedestrians than cars on the Golden Gate Bridge. Riding from south to north, there is really no good place to stop and get a good photo of the bridge. I was going to stop at the vista point on the other end, but traffic was backed up on the ramp to get to it, and there were people everywhere. I just didn't feel like wrestling the Gold Wing through that parking lot. Slow speed parking lot maneuvers are not my friend on a 900 lb., fully loaded bike.
I tried to get a good shot of the bay while exiting on the other side, but traffic was crazy and the shot was sort of behind me. Oh well.
Then into Sonoma Valley. Many beautiful wineries here, and grapes growing everywhere. A wine tasting would have been nice, but then riding may have been a bit treacherous.
Roses lined the fields of grapevines. I can't resist taking photos of roses :)
On in to Sacramento. I-80 E was just about stopped, and my camera was malfunctioning, so I got off the highway when I saw a Wal Mart to check the camera and buy a new one if necessary. Fortunately I was able to coax the shutter to fully close, so I didn't have to replace it. Since I was pretty close to North Highlands at that point, I decided to just ride through old Sacramento instead of getting back on the highway. I'm still not willing to split lanes. I think that's an acquired skill that I haven't acquired living in Georgia, and I'm really not wanting to end up in a California hospital on this trip.
Riding the surface streets was going fine until I reached a detour on Roseville Road that really didn't tell me which way to go - just an "End Detour" sign. Of course my GPS wanted to take me back down that road. So I changed the GPS back to travel highways and got back on I-80 E, and crawled for a while before it opened up. That adventure added about an hour to my ride, and it was HOT. Ugh.
Anyway, the whole reason for the jaunt through Sacramento instead of around it was to get to North Highlands to see my childhood home. My parents bought this house new in 1960, and we lived there until 1967 when my dad got transferred to Cape Kennedy in Florida. I remember this house with a beautiful lawn, a wooden trellis in front of the porch with passion flower vines, and of course no iron gates. Glad I wasn't here when those became necessary! Now the house is 55 years old, and though run down a bit, is still one of the better looking houses on the block. My dad installed the extra concrete on the left side of the driveway, and it's still in perfect condition. He also put concrete down the left side of the house behind that fence, and enlarged the patio in the back. My mom was an avid gardener, and in the back there were redwood enclosed flower beds all the way around the privacy fence, with concrete mower strips in front. Dad was good at making things easy to maintain :-) The house and neighborhood all looked so much smaller than I remember, but then I lived there from ages 5 to 11. I guess everything looked bigger then. This is a 4-bedroom, 2-bath house. The area has grown, and though I recognized some street names, the only other thing I saw from my time here was the old elementary school. It's seen better days too.
I checked into the Lodge around 8:30 p.m., and after that wonderful lunch at the Cliff House, decided a protein bar on the balcony would be dinner. I spent a couple of hours out there working on photos, and got up early on Tuesday to update the blog through Sunday.
A few early morning shots from the balcony. An early morning kayaker paddling out.
Just before sunrise
The sun's up!
And out come the vacationers. I overheard the mom telling the kids... "now we're going to have a good day today, no picking on each other." Sounds familiar from my childhood :-)
It was a quaint little room at the lodge, very rustic.
The guard bear in front of the lodge. I think he had bikers for breakfast! Zoom in on his tummy :-) I'd better get moving before he's ready for lunch!
After a hearty breakfast at the restaurant next to the lodge, I decided to backtrack about 40 miles of US 50 to get some pictures and enjoy those twisties one more time :-) It added 80 miles and a couple of hours to my day yesterday, but was totally worth it. I exhausted the first camera battery pretty quickly. I'll try to exercise some restraint in the number I post. Just beautiful scenery!
The sign out front says "Welcome to Kyburz" then "Now Leaving Kyburz" :-)
So now I'm back to the lake and headed north and east toward Ely, Nevada, my stop for the night. About 345 miles to go for the day. I got out of the Tahoe area just in time, the rain clouds were building. There was rain all around me all day, but the highway led me around the storms for the most part, just a couple of sprinkles until about 15 miles outside of Ely. The elevations went from 3,000 to 7,500 feet, so the temperature varied greatly all day. I finally stopped before Ely and put on my rain jacket (mostly because I was cold), and got into a light rain on my way into town. A couple of guys on sport bikes staying at the same motel were an hour or so ahead of me, and said they got hammered for about two hours riding the same route. They were washing their bikes when I got here. I cleaned the windshield. The bike is filthy, but I'm waiting until this evening when I land in Mountain Home, Idaho, and will be there for a few days to make the clean bike worth the effort.
My parents spent many weekends at Harrah's back in the 60's, both in Tahoe and Reno. That was their "getaway from the kids" time. Otherwise, all vacations were pretty much to visit family.
Headed out of town.
I tried to get some photos of the east side of the lake on the way out of town (on the Nevada side), but there was so much stuff built up around it, it was difficult to get a good shot. I got 1.
Clouds are starting to build.
Behind me - a couple of over the shoulder shots :-)
The roads are LONG out here in the desert.
Rain all around
Behind me again.
I checked my odometer when I took this one. Those mountains are 15 miles away.
And more rain out there... I've managed to stay cool and dry so far :-)
This is the one that finally got me on the way into Ely, but just on the back side of the storm. It had obviously rained hard in Ely, but I was far enough behind the storm to only get a light rain. Yay for me!
And that's the point where my camera battery died yesterday, so no more photos. I was going to find somewhere to go to dinner, but once in my room I just didn't feel like going out again. So I made a drink, put my feet up, and sorted through pictures. Later I had a pizza delivered for dinner, and of course fell asleep before I could get any blogging done. But I'm all caught up now!!
Headed for Mountain Home, Idaho today, for another VROC rally. This one is our annual wandering rally that is held in different locations every year; expecting a good turnout, including some friends from back east. It should be fun! I also have an appointment to put new tires on the bike on Saturday. I'll be wasting some tire life, but I don't think they'll make it home and this is my last long stop on the trip, so better safe than sorry. Gotta find a Wal Mart too, I need to get another battery or two, and some Fresca! More later!
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