May 23, 2023
It was a beautiful morning in the desert with the Sierra mountains to the west and the ones (Panamint?) to the east that guard Death Valley. The temperature was pleasant and there was no wind.
It was the usual procedure of getting the day started, unwinding from the night, getting breakfast going, breaking down the campsite, and repacking the bikes. We were on the road a little after 8am and continued riding up Hwy 395. I didn’t have cell service so the map software wasn’t available but figured I'd get that together when we got to Bishop. Alas, I had zero service in Bishop which is surprising since it’s not a small town.
We stopped at Mac’s Sporting Goods so Bill could get some propane.
We headed north and stopped for gas in Lee Vining. This is near the turnout to go over the Tiago Pass which goes right into Yosemite however, with all the weather they’ve had, that pass is still closed. It’s a great ride and one that I did in 1979 on my Honda CB750 as part of my “around-the-country” tour.
Heading out of Lee Vining we got stopped for construction just above Mono Lake. The Lake has some interesting geological and biological things going on but after taking a good look at it from above during our lengthily stop for construction, we decided to go on. While we were stopped, one of the construction trucks stopped and the driver said he really liked my FJR and was going get one. And he wasn’t a spring chicken.
We stopped somewhere for a photo of the Sierras.
From there we continued on 395 and passed through more road construction until we got to Minden, Nevada where we stopped at a Taco Bell for lunch. While I was interested in food, I was more interested in using their WiFi to update that last two days of the blog. That went fine. however, the Taco Bell doesn’t have a counter person. Instead they have kiosks where orders are placed. The head guy was nice and walked us through the process. And, it was Taco Tuesday so we each got a free taco. As it was a beef taco, Bill got two.
At a rest stop.
We headed out and turned on Hwy 50 which goes to Lake Tahoe. Then we took Hwy 28 which follows the east side lakeshore. We stopped for those obligatory photos. That lake is huge and quite picturesque with the snow capped mountains surrounding it. It looks like there is a bicycle path that runs along the lake. That would be fun to do. It is a quite touristy area with all the usual stuff associated with that but there is ritzy thing going on there too.
At Incline Village we grabbed Hwy 431 which took us through a mountain pass with 10-foot snow drifts alongside the road. It dropped us into Reno where we stopped for gas and to replenish our beer supply for that evening. Then it was back on the freeway.
I got to say that even after my years of driving the freeways of Los Angeles and our recent, just the other day, riding the slabs of San Diego, these Reno drivers are nuts. It seems that 75% of the drivers are changing lanes at any given moment. It was a wild ride until we got on 395 out of the city and after that, at every off ramp, we lost more crazies until it was just us and a few others heading north.
The wind came up and it was a challenge dealing with that as it was a cross wind from the west. It was buffeting me so much I turned off the music in my helmet because I could hardly hear it over the roar of the wind.
[An aside for those who haven’t followed my blog in the past. I have a device attached to my a helmet, a Cardo PacTalk Bold. It’s about the size of a matchbox and is on the left side of the helmet. It is connected to JBL speaking mounted in the helmet. Through Bluetooth, it connects to my phone. With that, I can hear the navigation prompts from from the Google navigator, play music that is on my phone or stream from a music service, make phone calls, and, what is really cool, is that I can use all the “Hey Siri” stuff like asking how far it is between Incline Village and Reno, what time it is, etc. All of this is done with voice commands. I can tell it “Hey, Cardo, Music On” or “Hey Cardo Volume Up” and commands like that. It’s convenient and, if another rider has a Cardo, we can chat back and forth, which really beats pulling over to communicate.]
I’d done a search for campgrounds and found a forest service one called Laufman Campground, south of Susanville about 30 miles. We got off 395 and followed a mix of asphalt, dirt, and gravel to the campground, about 3 miles off the highway, up in the forest. There are about a dozen sites but we’re the only ones here.
We got things set up and settled down to debrief on the the day and I started writing this blog entry.
It was a 326.9 mile day.
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