Motorcycle Trip - 2009: CA/OR Coast

I thought I’d start out my renewed attempt by telling about my recent week-long motorcycle trip with my good friend John Cooper, originally from England but currently residing in Australia. Our trip would take us from Orem UT to the N. California Coast, up through Oregon back down through California and back to UT. After getting really bad weather last year, see the prvious posts, I decided that a late June/July time frame would work out a little better. It also made it possible for John and his wife Noelle to take a vacation and join us. Because of convenience, and the fact that I enjoy it, I took up the task of mapping our route. A motorcycle trip is fun to map out. You first decide on a basic destination or region based on the time available for the trip. Since I had never been to northern California or Oregon I thought this would be a good place to ride to. Next, you get a good atlas and map out a basic route looking for the scenic roadways marked out on the maps, the more mountainous and twisty the better. After that you need to figure out mileage and stopping points for each day. This can change the route a bit because the scenic roads don’t often have a lot of cities along them. I try to shoot for around 300 miles a day. This gives enough riding each day to cover some ground, have some fun, and still leaves room to add in interesting side trips that you always happen upon along the way. We decided to do this trip as a camping trip with just one night in a hotel in the middle to get one good night’s rest and a shower. Most nights were spent in a tent. I was a bit nervous about this plan since I’ve done these trips before and after a long day in the saddle you really look forward to a nice bed to sleep in. The romance of motorcycle camping and keeping the budget low both drove the decision to camp. I’m happy to report that from here on out I will always camp on these trips. It’s fun and saved a lot of money.

Day 1

We got a bit of a late start because John had to buy some new gear, most of his was on a container ship making it’s way slowly to Australia, besides who doesn’t like an excuse to buy new motorcycle gear. After John got done securing insurance and the rented Harley Davidson Heritage Softail (really a great looking bike) we got a start around 5:00 and made our way toward Ely NV by way of the back roads along the old Pony Express route, through Delta UT where we stopped for dinner. While fueling up we met an older English couple that had been touring on their motorcycle for the past 3 months. They seemed to have quite a lifestyle as all of their stories went back to other long motorcycle trips or sailing around on their yacht. It was getting rather dark by the time we got done with dinner. As the stars began appearing I started getting pretty tired. Luckily John didn’t mind the several stops I took to hop off the bike and do some jumping jacks, or at one point a little rock climbing. After nearly ending a large jackrabbit’s life we finally made it to the Ely KOA. Nice weather and exhaustion prompted us to just toss out sleeping bags on the grass and get some sleep. While attempting to sleep we were privy to the increasing volume of the rather dirty discussions taking place among a group that were apparently drinking rather heavily. Had I been there is mixed company I would have been pretty embarrassed.

Day 2

Final destination – Truckee CA, near lake Tahoe. We woke up this morning to a beautiful day. We got packed up and hit the road to find some food. I’ll take a moment to describe our daily schedule.

We usually rolled out of the tent between 8:00 -9:00

Meander around for a few minutes

8:30-9:30 Find the shower

10:00 pack up the gear

10:30 fuel and or breakfast (usually the local greasy spoon, but we had a couple of McDonalds breakfasts when most convenient)

11:30 Hit the road and start putting some miles down

1:00 Stop for a soda and fuel

4:00 Stop for a soda and fuel

6:00 Dinner and Fuel

8:00 – 9:00 stop and set up camp

I also want to take the time to mention that while riding a motorcycle I usually don’t listen to music generally preferring the solitude of just riding and taking in the view. This opens up the mind and eyes to thinking and seeing a lot of random things. I will fill in some of the randomness that I remember. Don’t assume insanity, it’s just the tedium of the road that does it to me.

We stopped in some small town, I can’t even find it on a map, to have breakfast at Micky D’s, I remember being surprised to hear and Alela Diane song on the radio. I happened to see Alela Diane open for Blitzen Trapper a few months ago and really enjoyed her music. Since she is pretty unknown I was both surprised and happy to hear her on the radio.

From here we continued down Highway 50, known as the “Lonlienst Highway in American.” It’s a pretty accurate description. I chose Hwy 50 because you have two choices for driving across NV, the other is I-80. Since I don’t like to take freeways on motorcycle trips that made 50 the default, and we would later take I-80 on the way home. Heed my advise, do not take Hwy 50 as an optional scenic route across NV, just take I-80 and be done with it as fast as you can.. There are only a couple of towns along that entire section of roadway, Eureka and Austin. We rode through Eureka and stopped in Austin for a break from the heat and for a soda/fuel stop. While sitting in the nicely cooled, but poorly soda stocked store, we chatted with the girl running the cashier about the local community and the long expanse that is Hwy 50. We got our “Austin” stamp in the Hwy 50 passport guide book. Apparently NV doesn’t have much to tout so they’ve tried to make Hwy 50 some sort of endurance destination.

Along the way we had seen a few cyclists, usually towing trailers. I always wonder about these people, who they are where they’ve come from, what makes them want to cycle through the desert. As luck would have it we happened upon one such gentleman and as I needed something to break the monotony of the billions of sagebrush that were mocking me by the sheer number of them on that great expanse, I slowed way down and rode along side him. He seemed quite happy to take off his headphones for a bit of a chat. So he pedaled along while I putted along on the motorcycle. John was riding behind me on his motorcycle and was probably wondering what in the world I was doing. I leaned from this guy that he had ridden from New York and he was quite exited because he was only 5 days from the CA coast. I wished him luck and congratulations on making it this far and rode off.

Highway 50 really doesn’t have much in the way of scenery. We did take one off-shoot through a little mountainous area and some sort of dry lake, or maybe it was filled. I’m honestly still not sure if it was a mirage or not. It looked a bit like the salt flats. Once we were back on 50 it was just long strait roads and 100f temps. Along the sides of the road in the desert people had taken some of the black rocks and written names, or messages. This helped to stave off the monotony but only a little. John, happily cruising along with his mp3 player didn’t notice any of this at all and wondered why I was looking from side to side the whole time. We arrived in Fallon NV totally hot and dried out from the hot wind. Most of the time the wind helps keep cool under the leather jacket but once the temps reach 100f, the relief just isn’t there. It feels like you’re just riding in a hot furnace. We had a long lunch at Quiznos then got back on the bikes.

After cruising through Carson City, we began climbing the Sierra-Nevada’s toward Lake Tahoe. The road was fantastic, both the actual construction as it brand new, as well as the view and the cool temps. We stopped at one of the lookout points to take it in. John informs me that Tahoe looks much like Loch Lomond in Scotland. I hope to see that for myself someday. After a brief respite at the lake we road through the town(s) along the lake’s edge toward Truckee. We camped at the Donner Memorial State Park which was a pretty good little state park. I was glad that neither the bears nor John decided to get hungry enough to make a meal of me.