Back for more. California 2017

markkfletcher

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Back in May 2017 I returned to California for a fantastic 10 day 3000 mile trip around north and south California, quite a bit of Arizona, Utah and Nevada too. I've been meaning to do a write up, but these things are a big undertaking, and perhaps now, when you are starting to plan the next years adventure is a good time to look back.

In 2015 I did a whirlwind 5 day trip, and had a great adventure. However there is no way to do justice to a place like this in such a short time, so I promised to myself that I would go back. So a couple of years on I saved up and one dark January evening booked a flight to San Fransisco, and dropped an email to Dubbelju motorbikes in San Fransisco, asking them to reserve me their best R1200GS for 10 days in May.

I love having a trip like this lined up to get you through the cold dark winter, and all the fun of planning your route (admittedly not my strong point) and then organising, refining and buying gear for the trip.

When the weather started to warm up I went on a few trips to test out my kit. One memorable weekend in April, I rode up the west coast of Wales, and I have to say, some amazing roads, and most stunning campsites were only 200 miles away from my front door.

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This is not California, it is Snowdonia.

But as May came round I was itching to get moving. There is always a cost to trips like this in terms of family, and it isn't easy to justify time away. But I think these adventures are part of making you who you are, and to sacrifice them all together is to lose something too important. To lessen the injustice, we planned a big adventure round France for the moment schools broke up in July.

When the day came I loaded up the bike and rode to Heathrow and parked up for free just opposite the terminal entrance. I sometimes can't believe that everyone doesn't ride a bike. I wandered over, bought coffee and a newspaper and checked in.

It was a fine flight, but I was underwhelmed by Virgin (it was my first time) and it felt a bit gimmicky and worn out. Give me the slightly maternalistic British Airways any time, with comfort food and nice cups of tea.

We were lucky enough to have clear skies for the flight over. Amazing views all the way, over the Lake District, then Iona and Mull on the west coast of Scotland, the fjords of Greenland and then after a seemingly endless frozen wilderness, the Golden Gate itself.

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Incidentally I discovered that the Golden Gate isn’t the bridge – it is the strait between San Fransisco and Marin County and the bridge is named after it, and it is responsible for the slightly crazy weather that San Fransisco gets. The coastal range of mountains to the north and south have very few gaps in it, and so the weather rolling in over the thousands of miles of Pacific ocean gets funnelled through the Golden Gate and condenses rapidly into fog, for which the city is famous, and which often obscures the Bridge.

I have no recollection of immigration, which is a good sign – it can’t have been too long, then on to the BART train at the Airport which will take you in to San Fransisco for $10. You always need your first night hotel booked to get through immigration, (it is a good idea not to be trying to find a room when you are jet lagged anyway) and I was booked into the Holiday Inn on Van Ness Avenue. Took the BART to Civic Centre, and then a quick uber using my UK Account, which couldn’t be easier, and checked in. Nice hotel, comfortable and quiet, and reasonable for San Fransisco (which is notoriously pricey) in a central location. It was all you could ask for on a first night when sleep is the priority. It was supposed to have an outdoor pool, which Booking.com failed to tell me was being refurbished (possibly why my room was cheap). But pretty great views from my room east over downtown San Fransisco.

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Went out for a long walk to reset my body clock. Walked North all the way to Fishermans walk, then over Nob Hill past the crazy steep Lombard Street, swarming with Tourists, I can’t imagine how annoying it must be to live there. Incidentally, I found out why San Fransisco is so hilly. The Pacific Oceanic plate is being gradually subsumed under the North American plate (which the cause of all the volcanos and the earthquakes). But as it slides under, lots of debris from the surface of the oceanic plate accumulates and piles up along the edge of the continent and that is what the hills of San Fransisco are made of.

Found myself at Union Square and ate at Chipotle which is always a good option for decent quality fast food, and then starting to fade quite badly having been up for 24 hours now, stumbled back to the Hotel and crashed out.
 
Day 1 – San Fransisco to Santa Cruz

I had a great night sleep, but as ever after a transatlantic flight woke up really early. I was due to pick up the bike at 10am, so I had some time to kill. Got a coffee at Starbucks, then took a lovely walk up Pacific heights which has some of the most expensive real estate in the US, and you can see why. Jonny Ive lives here, and he is a man with sense of the aesthetic. One of the beautiful things is the way they have preserved the view – so in the distance you can see ocean, mountains and forest. This is Alcatraz from the lovely Lafayette Park.

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It must be very strange to live in an Earthquake zone, and know that at some point all of this is going to be flattened. I’m not superstitious, but that street number is asking for trouble…

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So then, back to the Hotel, picked up my kit and checked out. Then another Uber (I don’t really like Uber really, but so darn convenient) over to the Mission District to pick up the Bike from Dubbelju. Really helpful young guy called Alejandro sorted me out with a nice red 2016 1200 Liquid cooled GS. It always takes so much longer than you think to pack the bike and make everything fit, and I end up in a bad mood about those crappy Vario OEM panniers. How can they be so big, yet fit so little? Eventually I have it set up as I want it and Alejandro wheels the bike outside, and I ride off into the bright California morning. Here is me with a quite famous bridge in the background. If I appear quite wrapped up, I am – it is really cold!

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So nice to see the Golden Gate Bridge, but I am not going that way – all being well I will cross it in the opposite direction in 10 days time.

I’m planning to try and hug the coast as closely as possible for now, so I head out west and stop at Point Lobos. These long white sand windswept beaches stretch out ahead of you. I’m going that way, all the way south.

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Actually I’m not going that far that way right now, as it is 11am and I am famished having only eaten a Starbucks danish this morning. One of my gripes about America is the food. Sure, it can be very good, but day to day too much of it is crap, and travelling on a bike, when you have lots of things to think about, finding good food three times a day becomes a bit of a hassle, and I definitely get grumpy when I am hungry. However my first food stop was brilliant and set a precedent that I kept up almost every day. The Great American Breakfast. Most of the time I use the Foursquare app, and click the breakfast option and chose the best rated one. My first was The Boulevard Cafe in Daly City. You get the works for about $16 with bottomless coffee. Crispy bacon, sausage, eggs, toast, fried potatoes, tomatoes. Not cheap, but really good and sets you up for the day, and takes the pressure off finding a decent lunch.

So now feeling well fed and much happier the day stretches out before me like those white sand beaches and open roads.

Back to route 1, and though I have ridden this road before in 2015, this is utterly wonderful . Great road surface, surprisingly little traffic, sweeping curves, ocean views and forested headlands. This has to be one of the great roads on earth, and so worth returning to do a second time. Once again it goes too fast – I don’t stop for photos because I’m having too much fun. 70 miles goes in a flash, and the road swings west towards Santa Cruz.

Santa Cruz is famous (in my mind) for two things. It is the birthplace of Surfing in the US – two Hawaian princes were studying here, and were seen surfing waves in the mouth of the San Lorenzo River. And it is the location of the 80’s classic film The Lost Boys – that iconic fairground and boardwalk. Here is a photo of both of those locations.

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And in this south facing bay, out of the cold north wind, it was lovely and warm – a beautiful day. So I went for a swim in the mouth of the river where it meets the sea, going from warm fresh water to cold salt water, and slightly nervously swam with the seals that live there. There is nothing like a swim to get a feel for a place.

Now I am on a budget, and planning to camp more nights than I stay in hotels. So I roll up to the campground at New Brighton State beach, and there is a queue of cars, and when I get the check in desk it is full and they turn me away. Today is a Friday, so obviously it is busy, but my tent is about tiny, and I can see plenty of spaces between the 30 ft RV’s. So Instead I went to booking.com and found a Super 8 motel with decent ratings. Motels are definitely a mixed bag, and some can be grim (more on that later). But if the proprietor is good and looks after them, they can be absolutely fine. This one is just that. That evening I went for a walk round Santa Cruz, ate at Five Guys downtown, and then blew a stack of quarters at the arcades in the fairground, playing retro classic video games (actually that isn’t true about the quarters – slightly disappointingly now they have a charge card system). But the video games were great.

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Day 2 – Santa Cruz to Ventura

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Awoke to another beautiful morning, all set up for my first big days ride. The plan was to do the 300 mile ride south along the coast through Big Sur. But it all went a bit wrong. The best laid plans of mice and men…

I rode out of Santa Cruz along the cliff road, to the ocean, to a beautiful view of Monterey Bay, then on the Cannery Row in Monterey for breakfast at the very nice First Awakenings cafe. The along the headland Pacific Grove headland around to Carmel where I tried and failed to get onto 17 mile drive. I still can’t quite believe that Motorcycles are not allowed on this famous ocean drive, and so I tried something I picked up on a forum somewhere and tried to smile and wave as I rode through the checkpoint. The guard ran out and flagged me down, and I played innocent. But no go.

South of Carmel the coast gets really wild, and Big Sur is this 100 mile stretch where the mountains come down to the sea, with crashing waves and giant redwoods in the canyons. It is a breathtaking place, and Arthur Miller had a place there which is now a library which I wanted to revisit, and the famous McWay falls are not to be missed. California had been in drought for the last 6 years, but that had broken in dramatic fashion in March. And the aftermath of the torrential rains were still being felt. Riding down route 1 there were roadsigns that the road ahead was closed due to landslide. You always take those notices with a pinch of salt, especially on a GS, where there is usually some way through. But then up ahead, red and white road barriers and flashing orange lights and enormous earth movers. I stop to watch. The whole side of the mountain had come down, sweeping the road into the sea. Not only was there no way through, apparently there was another landslide further south and communities in between were completely cut off, and would be for days.

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So maybe I’m not going that way. I rode back north looking for another route. Eventually I spotted a little road heading up the wonderful Carmel Valley. This was never the plan, and you wouldn’t find your way here with the world class option of Route 1 through Big Sur, but this part of rural California is real Steinbeck country. One of his earlier works is ‘To a God Unknown’ and that is set exactly here, and the story centres on a settler coping with years of a drought that he had been warned about, but believed would never come back. However now, after the rains, the countryside is lush and there are flowers everywhere, and the only sounds are the rustling of the trees and the birds. This must have been how it looked to the original settlers who believed they had found paradise. Sheltered from the north wind the sunshine is warm, and the narrow roads wind through beautiful countryside, past occasional red barns and ranches, and up over the Santa Lucia Mountains.

At the summit, spread out ahead of me is the vast Salinas River Valley. As I roll down out of the other side of the mountains the wind starts to seriously pick up. I’ve largely avoided it, sheltered by the hills, but it is funnelled down the long north south valley, and it is really strong and cold. I join the 101 at Greenfield, and now I’m flying along with the wind behind. Riding on the freeway is kinda of missing the point on a trip like this, and it is a bit of a slog through farmland, and I am missing the good stuff but no choice. I stop for gas and coffee outside King City and make plans.

Eventually route 101 swings back to the coast at Pismo beach, and so I stop for some food and to watch the big waves crashing on the beach.The place is busy, and has a really touristy feel, full of gift shops with Harley Davidson signs and US flags, and all I can find to eat is a Subway.

South from here route 1 comes inland, and I’m trying to hug the close. The vast Vandenberg Air Force and the Point conception nature reserve are in the way. This is the point that is generally reckoned to separate north and South California, and it feels sort of in between places. Some beautiful landscape, but neither here nor there.

There are cyclists on the road, apparently doing the coast on a bike but they are literally failing to make any headway against the wind, and I see one flagging down a pickup for a lift.

At at Gaviota you reach the ocean again sparkling in the sunshine, and sheltered by the coastal mountains the temperature starts to pick up. From here the coast starts to get much more developed, and I ride into the beautiful Santa Barbara, and park next to the beach. I realise I am quite tired, and lie down on the warm sand, and doze off. Blissful.

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Suitably recharged I have a wander along the seafront, but I spent a night here on my last trip, so I’m ready to keep moving. New things to see! This next stretch of road is freeway, but it is next to the ocean, and it is fabulous, 6 lanes of american dream.

It doesn’t feel like I have done much today, but I have ridden 350 mile, and I’m ready to stop soon. I’m planning to stay in Ventura and I have booked a motel by the railway tracks. I like Ventura, it is a proper town with an industrial heritage, and it is also on the Ocean.

Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia, started out here fabricating mountaineering metalwork. Chouinard chose this spot because it meant he and his employees could down tools and go surfing whenever there was a big swell.

“A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation.”
― Yvon Chouinard, Let My People Go Surfing

There is a good thought to end the day on.
 
Day 3 - Ventura to who knows where

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Woke up to a quiet Sunday morning, the weather is cool, clear and breezy. Walked out to get coffee and have a look around. It is a great little town, a nice mix of industry and surf culture. The old cinema is classic, I wonder past the original Patagonia workshop and

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a branch of Iron and Resin, with a fabulous R80g/s in the window. Outside I bumped into a bunch of locals on BMW's all on their way for a Sunday ride, including a British guy who had lived here for 20 years on a yellow 1150GS. They invited me along, and I probably should have joined them, but I want to get moving.

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This railway line is a feature of lots of the coast of California, built to ship produce from the farms to the ports for shipping, it is now an Amtrak route called the Pacific Surfliner which runs from San Diego to Santa Barbara. Trains roll straight through the centre of towns - largely because the lines predate most of the building, which are less than a century old and you find yourself walking over the tracks all the time.

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The original settlers of this part of California were the Franciscan friars who travelled up from Mexico in the late 18th Century. They established a string of Missions and built beautiful churches. You see references to El Camino Real all along the coast, which is the Kings Road - the original road that linked all these missions together.

Between Ventura and LA is another great little stretch of Route 1, running under the Santa Monica Mountains with the beach on your right. I ride that all the way to Malibu, where I plan to stop for breakfast. Being a Sunday morning the breakfast place I had lined up was rammed, so I ended up having a very unsatisfactory Starbucks breakfast. And then with LA on the horizon I set off excited about what the day entails.

Once again this isn't going to go to plan.

My Phone is mounted on a RAM mount and I'm using the TOMTOM app. It's a great setup - I know lots of people prefer a dedicated Satnav, but this does all I need, which is mostly a north arrow, and a map with live updates and speed cameras. However rolling towards Santa Monica I noticed that my phone isn't charging, and the Satnav drains the battery pretty quickly.

I stop to see what is going on, and somehow I have managed to crush the Powerlet/USB adapter that powers my phone. What follows is a quite long story about trying to find a replacement on a Sunday in a country that despite appearances doesn't speak my language. It is like when you speak with an English accent people just look confused and assume they are not going to understand you.

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The BMW Motorrad dealership is closed on Sundays so I had a nice tour of hardware and electrical stores in LA. Not your normal way of navigating around a great city, but interesting nonetheless. If anyone is ever in this strange predicament again the answer is no, nobody stocks them. Eventually I go back to Frys and manage to get enough bits and pieces to cobble something together wiring what is left of my hella blog into a conventional 12v socket extension and then putting a USB adapter in that. It actually works pretty well, and I should have done this first

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I've now spent quite a lot of the day doing this now. I sort of saw LA along the way, but not in any meaningful sense, and I'm fed up of heavy traffic and incessant stop lights every block.

First I went to see the Griffith Observatory, made famous most recently by La La Land, and the views were magnificent.

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Looking at the satnav it is heavy Sunday evening traffic all the way to San Diego, and I just can't quite face that. The danger is that you make poor decisions in this mood. It's odd actually, both times I have been to LA I have had this claustrophobic sense of needing to get out. It is a fascinating city, but there is something so overwhelming and self referential about it that I just need to get back to the wilds. I live in central London the rest of the time, so it isn't that I have a problems with cities. It is just the endlessness of the sprawl and that fact that nothing means anything and what little history there is is so idolised.

And of course your eyes are constantly drawn to the mountains which dominate the skyline. So with little forethought and no provisions, I head northeast aiming for the fabulous sounding Angeles Crest Highway. It is always fight to get out of LA, but eventually the road heads up a canyon, and altitude starts to be gained. Amazing views in every direction, with the city and the ocean behind, and the mountains and the Forest ahead. Great sweeping bends, big drops - I find myself a bit surprised at how high I am (these mountains rise to over 10,000 feet. The sun starts to set, and the temperature is dropping, but I am having too much fun to care. At the watershed I stop to take photographs of the clouds rolling over the pass. But I hadn't missed the fact that it was now nearly dark, and I was in the middle of the mountains.

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Do you do that thing where you don't stop to put your cold weather kit on, because you are in a hurry, as a result get more and more chilled but as you get chilled your brain functions less well and you can't make the decision to stop and put on your kit? I did that thing.

And the next was a sign saying 'Road Closed Ahead'. Now I have already explained my attitude to those signs, and so I plough on. Despite the cold and dark I am having an amazing time, and a proper adventure, and I certainly don't want to turn back.

Everything seems fine but I do start to notice a few small rocks in the road. And then bigger ones. And then I discover why the road has closed. This will not be the last rockfall I encounter on this trip. It became quite the theme. I guess that after years of low rainfall, when it does come down it brings down a lot of accumulated debris with it.

Eventually I am weaving through some small boulders, thinking that perhaps this isn't smart. I'm obviously having to go quite slowly too so it is getting late. And the ice light on the dashboard has come on. I don't have one of these fancy modern features on my bike at home, so I'm not absolutely clear what that means, but I get the gist. And I notice that there are ski resorts up here and man it is cold.

My initial plan is to find a campsite up here, a night under the starts in the mountains sound perfect, but it is probably going to be sub-zero up here tonight, and I'm not sure I am up for that. And the road is now starting to descend, so I attempt to get a bit lower before I stop. Finding a campsite in the dark is actually really tricky, and when I do find one it is closed. The Angeles Crest highway is 66 miles of twisting mountain road. It is brilliant and you should probably do it in the daylight. When I finally get to the end, at the little town of Big Pines it is very strange. Because after 66 miles of wild Alpine scenery, I am back on the outskirts of the vast LA sprawl again. All convenience stores and gas stations and 6 lane highways. I'm not really sure where I am, and I don't care. It is now very late, I am very tired and I just want to go to bed, so I stop for gas, book a hotel and ride up Route 15 to find a Holiday Inn Express outside a town called Hesperia and take a hot shower to warm up and then crash out.
 
Hi , thanks for posting this, We were out there in May last year and did the Pacific Coast Highway, albeit in a hired Mustang, we did the 17 mile drive thing, and whilst it is pretty, it's also very busy so I don't think you missed much. We were staying Jamestown prior to going to Yosemite when met up with a chap on a yellow 1150gs and spent a good while having a mardle, wonder if it's the same guy?.Looking forward to next instalment(s). Cheers:beerjug:John B
 
Thanks John. Hope you had a great trip I look like it might just be the same guy. What are the chances of that?
 
Day 4 - Into the Desert

Waking up in a big comfy bed after a long day on the bike is a lovely thing. I wish I had managed to sleep out under the stars, but a bit of luxury is rather nice. However I had a dispiritingly grim breakfast at the hotel to make up for it. The Americans have got a serous problem with disposable plastic everything. Plates, cups, cutlery, all wrapped in more plastic. And the food feels like disposable plastic too. Grim oatmeal, nasty bacon and reconstituted freeze dried eggs. Yum.

I spent some time looking at maps over breakfast and realised that where I ended up is was on the edge of the Mojave desert. It has to be one of the most mind-blowing things about California is the variety of terrain. From the beaches of Malibu, through the urban sprawl of LA, into serious mountains and then into the desert in the course of a day is astonishing. Is there anywhere else on earth you can do that?

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I head out into the desert and go for a play on some of the dirt roads. Great fun standing on your pegs, trying to maintain speed and your nerve through the sand, but I'm not massively confident, and it isn't my bike, so I don't make it as far off road as I wanted. There is a Hot Springs out here somewhere, but I didn't get that far. My next stop was Joshua Tree national Park. Joshua Trees are those brilliant desert Yukka plants, that look a bit (to the mormon settlers at least) like they are holding their hands out in prayer.

But of course the other significant connection is that 2017 was the 30th Anniversary of the release of an Album that was so influential that it was part of the landscape of my teenage years. You didn't like U2's album any more than you liked oxygen, it was so vast and ubiquitous that it was simply the air that you breathed. But looking back the scale and ambition of that album, inspired by the scale of these desert landscapes was something so significant. I always said I would have 'where the streets have no name' at my funeral.

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I put on the Album as I roll through Joshua Tree national park which is magical. These crazy rock formations in the midst of an arid landscape have a stark wonder about them. I parked the bike and walked off into the desert, along not very well defined paths and no signposts to find the Wall Street Mill - a ruined, but amazingly well preserved 1933 ore processing mill, surrounded by abandoned early 20th century cars. The dry heat soaks into your bones, but also stops things rusting, and this junkyard is now a national monument - a brilliantly American piece of history.

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Now I think the point of adventures is the unknown. Planning is good, but the most memorable stuff is what else happens. I rode on from Joshua Tree along Route 62 past a gas station at 29 Palms, and there was a sign saying 'Next Gas 100 miles'. I briefly registered it, looked at my fuel meter which said 2/3 full and rode on. The road opened up before me, I'm riding fast and the wind still blowing a gale, and soon I am in the middle of the Sonoran desert. This is just majestic scenery. It is beautiful, but it is also really a kind of no mans land, with abandoned cars here and there, bullet holes in the road signs, broken bottles by the side of the road which look like they date from the 1930's.

And as I watch the fuel meter tick down I start to realise how far 100 miles is. After an hour or so the fuel light comes on, and I am still a long way from the next town.

Now the reserve tank on my GS at home will get me about 30-40 miles on the reserve tank but I've no idea what the capacity of this one is. I'm personally running on a mixture of adrenaline and anxiety. After 20 more minutes I see a sign - 20 miles to go, and I feel like the bike is running on fumes.

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Of course it is going to be fine. What is the worst that could happen? It is interesting how your brain comes up with some fairly serious worse case scenarios at times like this. I am as a long way from anywhere in the middle of the desert. I come to the road junction with the 177 and check the map carefully, I can't afford to take a wrong turn.

Eventually there is something on the horizon. It is a big mobile phone mast, and then out of the haze is the scrappy no horse town of Vidal Junction, and there is the tiny Gas Station. That was a bit stupid of me. Note to self. If in doubt, fill up with gas.

From there I turn north on the 95 and head for Needles, on the border of California and Arizona. If you've read The Grapes of Wrath you'll remember the lovely moment where they first eventually make it to California from Oklahoma, and they swim in the Colorado river. That is set here. Route 66 passes through here, and I found a nice campsite, and then went to a diner for a Caeser Salad, with real actual vegetables for the first time in days and watched ice hockey on the TV before turning in for a quiet night under the desert stars.

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Enjoying that and I agree LA is horrible and as soon as you get there, you want to leave!!
 
Day 5 - Get your kicks...


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I woke up and packed up the tent. Often this is a bit of a pain as you have to lay it out to dry, but in the desert there is almost no dew at all. I rode into Needles and had a fine breakfast at the Wagon Wheel - which describes itself as an old west style eatery, obviously with plenty of wagons, with and without their wheels. I bought a route 66 sticker too for my panniers.

One of the things is about this place is the cult of the car that is made more obvious by the fact that old cars don't rust away. Thousands of old cars were driven through here in the 30's in the hands of desperate migrant farmers like the Joads in the Grapes of Wrath. Many of them didn't make it and some are still here. Old Model T fords and Chevvy Trucks amongst many others.

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Now Route 66 is so famous that it is a bit of a surprise to discover that lots of it doesn't exist any more. The old 'Mother Road' has been replaced by freeways in quite a few places, here it is under Route 40. Often it is literally underneath the new road, sometimes you can see it at the side, and then here and there it is still in use. There is a great loop of it between here and Seligman in Arizona which I want to ride. It takes a winding route down out of the Plateau to the Colorado river valley, and is great fun. The towns along the way make a big show of the route 66 thing, and everywhere there is automobile artefacts and americana.

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Now from here I was planning to ride out to see the Grand Canyon. It is a long way through Arizona - something like 230 miles. So I settled in for a long day in the saddle. Grand Canyon is amazing, and you have to see it, but it is quite literally in the middle of nowhere. And once I had ridden there, I had to ride back again.

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I wanted to come back on the north side but that meant going down almost to Flagstaff then up to Lake Page and the Glen Canyon Dam on the Utah Border. It is another 100 miles or so. And Highway 89 runs through Navajo Nation territory. It is hard land, and the I'd love to talk about the stark beauty of the place, but it just felt grim.

Page, Arizona is located on top of a vast Mesa, and the ride up is very impressive. I slowed down to take in the view, which was fortunate. I've not seen many police on this trip, but I passed one in a lay-by here, just about slow enough to not get in trouble. My plan was to Camp in Page, but I rolled up to the campsite to be told it was full. Booking.com didn't offer me any decent options either. I had Barbecue, which was fine but not great, and I'm clearly tired and a bit grumpy now. I decide to shake the dust of this crummy town off my feet, which is a slightly odd decision when you are in a place which is reckoned to be among the most remote in the United States.

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So what followed was another long ride in the growing darkness. I was amazing actually, and I would have liked to see more of the country I was passing through. Utah has a really different feel to Arizona, all gulches and prairies and canyons. A properly wild west feel. But obviously there isn't anywhere to stay, nor is there any phone signal to speak of. I really should have tried harder to find a campsite, or even just pitched up somewhere and slept. But no, I rode on. Along the 89, through the brilliantly named Fredonia, stopping for Gas and eventually finding a signal, and managed to book a hotel in Mesquite, only 100 miles further on. By this point that didn't seem very far at all so I rode all the way back to Arizona. Ultimately I rode something in the order of 550 mile in a day. Mental.
 
Day 6 – A bit of a flutter

Mesquite is another Casino town. Casino’s are the main employer, and the biggest source of income. All the hotels and coffee shops seem to be connected to the casinos.

I went for breakfast, and obviously the restaurant was part of a casino. Walking into the casino at 9 in the morning to see people plugging away on slot machines, drinking and smoking indoors (which feels grim these days). I didn’t stay long. Standing outside with my coffee I got into a weird conversation with a drunk guy who who had obviously been there all night and liked the look of my bike, and then went on to moan about his family who had come to visit. He was nice drunk, but his brother came over too, and he was a mean drunk.

As I was pulling out of the Casino parking lot, a young couple on a dirt bike pulled in, both without helmets on. I suddenly remembered that Arizona doesn’t have a helmet law. I’ve never ridden without one, so just for the experience I took mine off and and set off down the road. The wind in my hair, the noise of the engine… the sound of police sirens.

The officer was pleasant enough about it. But he wanted to know what the hell I was doing riding without a helmet. He was kind enough to point out that while Arizona may not have a helmet Law, Mesquite is in Nevada, and they most certainly do.

I apologised profusely, cursed the rednecks on the dirt bike under my breath, put my helmet back on and rode away somewhat shamefaced, but fortunately without a ticket.

From Mesquite I headed west again essentially along the north bank of the Colorado river, towards Vegas. It was desert country again, the light is really unique here, even under cloudy skies, the sand must reflect the light and so everything has this bright, pearlescent quality. I couldn’t see the river though, so I turned south, through the very dramatic sounding, and equally dramatic looking ‘Valley of Fire’ state park, named for its bright red sandstone and its sometimes searing temperatures. If would quite have liked some searing temperatures, but failing that, I got amazing twisty roads, stunning views and all together wonderful riding.

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I was planning to see the Hoover Dam, but I needed some food, and so I popped into Vegas. Obviously you can’t pop into Vegas – it is huge, and a bit distracting. I had been there years ago and had a really interesting experience chatting to ordinary people who made a living in this quite surreal town. I park up and go for a stroll up the Vegas Strip, which if anyone is concerned, is the name of the road, rather than a description of what goes on there. It is such a weird contrast to all the wilderness around it, having driven through hundreds of miles of desert to get there, and then to see people strolling around like they are in Blackpool and having prepackaged fun and hijinks.

I needed to stock up on decent quality road snacks, being a bit sick of food bought in Gas Stations so I headed to the Wholefoods near the airport, and bought dried fruit and Cashews and Clif bars.

And then, feeling the effects of my crazy day yesterday, and also needing to do more camping, I set off to find a campsite, and spotted a great looking one up in Red Rock Canyon. It was fabulous, a real desert camping experience, and I pitched up and chilled out for the afternoon, and got an early night.

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Day 7 – From the lowest to the highest

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I wasn’t sad to leave Vegas behind, especially given the day I had lined up. But first I stopped for breakfast just up the road and the cafe had some peculiar alien theme going on. Alien stickers, t shirts, soft toys, anything really. After a bit of confusion I worked out it was due the proximity of Area 51, which is genuinely significant because of project OXCART which was the development of non radar detectable planes, leading to the development of the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. And not actually significant but famous because of rumours of the storage, examination, and reverse engineering of crashed alien spacecraft there.

The temperatures have been unseasonably low all through this trip, that strong wind from the north bringing temperatures down. That was sometimes a problem, but in Death Valley it was a blessing, except that perhaps I was a bit disappointing not to have the full DV experience. I suspect that if I had the full DV experience I might not have appreciated it, but non the less. Temperatures were in the high 80’s and very pleasant indeed. The landscape is a wonder of dry lakes and dramatic sedimentary features.

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It was all over a bit too quickly really, and photographs fail to do justice to it. I stopped for lunch in Stovepipe wells, and then rode over Towne Pass and then ahead of me are the Sierra Nevada mountains, all covered in snow, and Mount Whitney itself, the highest point in the continental US. Such a stunning part of the world, one of my absolute favourites. If I had to choose anywhere to ride it would be this far side of the Sierra Nevada.

There is a road up to the Mount Whitney Portal, and I rode up there, it was really dramatic to go from from below sea level in Death Valley to about 9000 feet under Mount Whitney.

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The only way from there is back down, but my next objective was pure luxury. This mountains are formed volcanically and geologically quite young, and as a result there are lots of Hot Springs around here. Some are wild, and free to use, others like Keough Hot Springs have been developed. But for $12 I was quite up for a bit of luxury. It is delightful actually, built in 1919 and really historic. There is a warm swimming pool, and a massive 104°f hot pool all fed from the natural spring.

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After that I camped in one of my favourite towns, Bishop Colorado. Climbing Mecca, all round brilliant town, and on this afternoon as the sun shone after the rains, radiantly beautiful. Ate in one of the brilliant microbreweries, sampled the local beers and settled down for a happy nights sleep

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Angeles Crest Highway is the perfect antidote to LA isn't it ? I hated LA too....

Off to read Day 5 now, keep up the good work
But don't skimp on the photos, there's plenty of room for more :thumb
 
After that I camped in one of my favourite towns, Bishop Colorado.

Obviously I mean Bishop, California.:loopy
Colorado is a very long way away!

Thanks for the feedback Gents.
 
The LA Crest Highway is fantastic. Definitely in my top ten :thumby:

Great pictures and I can’t wait to get back out there in June :cool:
 


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