California Dreamin'

9/16/10 Leavin' Las Vegas! 12 hours in the Sin City and time to head out. Here I am with my cousin, Barney Robertson. We rode together until Barstow, CA and then he headed to the LA area and we travelled north. We had a great few days together in the Utah and Nevada area.

The world's largest thermometer close to the Nevada/Calif. border. Another one of the highlights of scenery pictures!

9/16/10 Some more of the scenery along the byways of the High Sierra's! As you can tell there isn't a lot of "living" things along the way. It was extremely HOT and not much of anything along Old Hiway 58. In fact someone stopped to help direct us when we were looking at maps to get us hooked up to Hiway 395. I told you lots of nice people on this adventure.

As I had mentioned before we made the next stop in Ridgecrest, California. This is China Lake where the Naval Weapons Testing is done. Because of my "cold bug" we holed up for 2 days to get the energy to get back on the road. Nice people at the Best Western here!

9/18/10 Stopped for lunch at this local joint close to Big Pine, California. We tried to dine at the local places when we weren't just wingin' it with grocery store supplies!

9/18/10 Mark, the happy camper! He was thrilled he had a hose at his campsite and could try and get the massive dirt and dust off the bike and trailer. We decided to camp when we could because the outside air worked better for breathing at night with our colds vs. the stale air conditioning in a hotel. This was Brown's Town Campground in Bishop, California. A great find with a lot of "fishermen" campers around us. Only downside was one of them found a baby rattlesnake on the path to the office. Luckily it was dead or I would be getting a trailer! We decided to move our boots and other items up off the ground as suggested..... No other sightings.
Tonight was be inventive night for dinner- Mark went to the office "deli" and bought a loaf of bread off them and we made PB and honey sandwiches! Sometimes you just have to do it.

9/19/10 To YOSEMITE! We decided to go over Hiway 120 AKA Tioga Pass from the east entrance. It was a nice day but cloud cover coming in with a possible prediction of a storm so we opted to reserve a room on the west side once we got out. We had a gourmet lunch at the "Mobil Station" which had a renowned chef. You'd never guess but again, a motorcycle rider in Ridgecrest had told us about this place and he was spot on. The fish taco's with mango salsa were superb! Luckily it gave the driver some energy for the pull up the pass. We didn't know how steep and graded the road was. This was probably the most strenuous pull we've had for the trailer and with the new intercom working again I heard the comments! Still, for the passenger it was beautiful and I got lots of priceless pictures. Good job on the driving, Mark!

Yes, the pass got up to almost 10,000 feet. We were up and down 7000 feet swings and temperature changes of 70 degrees from what it was in our Nevada adventure with Barney. No wonder our sinuses won't clear! Into Yosemite we go.

On top of the pass with the glacial views and gorgeous scenery. We had fun visiting with some tourists from Blythe, Ca here. They wanted to know if we had seen any bears yet! NO. The temperature was down to about 55-60 at this point.

They had these signs all over with the posted speed limit. We were thinking that lumbering bears could do a number on motorcyclists and that we wouldn't hurt them too much. But, no bear sightings on this trip. Did see a 4 point mule deer, lots of squirrels, birds and people!

This reminded me of a postcard view. It was awesome to see El Capitan and Half Dome in one shot. We got a lot closer but again, you'll have to see my "slide show" later!

The sheer granite sides of El Capitan in Yosemite. I was amazed at the variety of scenery in the Park. It is surely a natural wonder and testimony to why we wanted to see "what was in our back yard" in the USA.

The weather got warmer and the trees got thicker in the actual Yosemite Valley. The sequoia's dwarfed the pines. The little roadways weaved in and out of the trees, streams, rivers and sunshine streamed in between. Truly a marvel.
We came out on the west side about 6 pm and found our hotel- along with hundreds of other tourists! We visited in the parking lot with about 8 Harley riders from Germany. They had started in Las Vegas and were working their way to San Francisco over a couple days.

We were glad to rest our heads for the night and make another pass into Yosemite tomorrow.
Happy 1st Anniversary Kyle and Stephanie!

9/20/10 Mark was ready to go again since he didn't have to go over the Tioga again! We came back to Yosemite Valley and went into Bridalveil Falls for the picture opportunity. It was fun to watch the waterfall change as the wind did. The weather was perfect and we got some lunch goodies at the Yosemite Village and picnicked.

9/20/10 Powerade Ad Man! At Stanislaus National Park - this area known as the "Rim of the World". We are so glad we opted to come to Yosemite. It kind of makes up for not getting to Yellowstone on this trip! We came out on Hiway 120 to Groveland, California and got a campsite at Yellowstone Pines Campground. The weather has been perfect in the 70's-80 during the day and 40's at night. Since we heard there was rain at home we aren't in a hurry to get back!

We are going to work our way to the Napa Valley region next..... more later!

It was a year ago we were here for Kyle and Stephanie's wedding! Hard to believe that much time has passed. We are saying that about this trip, too.

We are in our 18th state and have about 7,200 miles logged in over the past 7 weeks! We say we need to pinch each other just to make sure this is real!

Hello to everyone and hope all is well.