Monday, April 12, 2010

Cali Moto Tour 2009 - Day 3 - June 3

Cali Moto Tour 2009 - Day 3 - June 3

Troy - 8:05PM: Yesterday was kind of crazy. It started nicely. We had breakfast and broke down camp. It was pleasant weather. We rode by an area SW of the highway 89 junction near Burney. The route was suggested to us by the ranger in a nearby town. Apparently we went by some property owned by Clint Eastwood; it was pretty, but nothing amazing.


There was some aggregate company or something that had a bunch of metal-critter-art-sculpture-things. Think of big recycled steel equipment like cement truck mixers or VW beetle bodies, turned into giant animals and insects... pretty neat.


From there we headed into Lassen and the weather began to cool off and turn gray. The road through Lassen was closed but we were able to go 10 miles into devastation ridge, I think--the place where mudslides and lava ripped through in 1915 when the mountain errupted. We took a short walk around some exhibits there, it was pretty close to the peak of Mt. Lassen--a good view point.

It started to rain on us as we left there, and we got rained on periodically for the rest of the day.
We took gravel road #17 (there's a neat campsite by a creek back there) around Lassen Park to the west to get down to 89 again on the South side. It started raining hard on us shortly after we got back on pavement. We came through a place where initially we thought it had just snowed, but on second look, we realized it was hail that had piled up deep. Not as big as marbles but big enough that it would have hurt to ride through it on a motorcycle. So i was glad that we had just missed it.

It was pretty much a lot of cold, wet riding. We stopped for a long time in Quincy to dry out and eat lunch. We found a neat cafe and--not wanting to camp that night in the rain in our wet clothes--we used their computer to send a bunch of couchsurfing requests. Also, one of the servers called her friends in Truckee, thinking we could probably stay with them, but she couldn't reach them.


We were really not wanting to camp in the rain!


Burl: At this point I was feeling a bit agitated that Troy hadn't set up any potential couches and kind of bummed about the weather... and of course, cold. But i felt encouraged by the sweetness of the woman at the Pangea Cafe, and was happy to be in Quincy for a bit... gotta go to High Sierra next year!

The road between Quincy and Truckee was really beautiful. Big flat green meadows, surrounded by wooded hills, horses and a cute little town or two.

We finally made it to Truckee and found a pub to check phone messages, etc. Almost the instant we sat down, the guy next to us struck up a conversation. As it turns out, he's really into bike trips and is heading to Bend later this month! He offered us drinks and a place to stay, we accepted both!

Our new friend, Uncle Ron, was super helpful and says he'll be up to visit us in Bend soon.

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