Tentative dates for my trip 

Trip dates and locations

It's Late night Tuesday, July 26 and I've just finished putting together a shortened list of many of the locations I'm going this summer plus dates for each place. Obviously the further out the date, the more it's likely to vary.

Day 34, Tuesday, July 19.

I basically spent the entire day today re-planning my route and catching up on journal entries. Met Steve over in down town Sacramento for lunch today. I think I may head out to Lake Tahoe on Thursday just to see it and I’ve decided that prior to heading North from Sacramento, I’m going to head down to Yosemite for a few days. I read on line today that by late summer most of the water falls have dried up to just a trickle and that many of the lakes dry up also. I’ll need to wear my hot weather suit while visiting there, since the highs are supposed to be in the 90’s during the day next week. Also I think I’m going to stick around here in Sacramento until Monday so I can spend a weekend hanging out with Steve and Heidi and also so that I avoid the weekend traffic in Yosemite.

me having some fun rock climbing at the mouth of the Russian River 

These things were all over the beach. Can anybody tell me what they are? When they're wet, they're clear with trapped bubbles. When they dry out they look like white tissue paper. 

seals at the mouth of the Russian River 

Korbel 

just a couple of bottles? Turns out they were all antique and all empty. Still an impressive sight. We were learning about candling the bottles and the inherent dangers of that job. 

Jeanette and me in just arriving at Korbel 

Day 33, Monday, July 18

After breakfast and breaking camp, Jeanette and I both concluded that it was time to flee the oppressive heat of Napa for the cooler temps of the coast. TJ and Suzy Liese had suggested a drive along the Russian River while I was staying with them and that sounded just about perfect to both Jeanette and me. The drive was beautiful, the temperature was completely agreeable, and our choice of roads accidentally led us to ride right in front of the Korbel Champagne estate. Here again, on a whim, we decided to stop in to see the facility. What an incredible difference from the Berringer winery! We happened to get there 30 mins before their free tour, during which time the woman at the info center was energetic, welcoming, and an incredible wealth of knowledge on the area. After giving us some back ground on the estate and its history, she suggested we go over for a free champagne tasting prior to the tour. (Note: FREE. The perfect price!) Both Jeanette and I were very pleased with the selection of champagnes available for tasting and here too, the girl pouring for us was cheerful and had a wealth of knowledge she was eager to share with us. She also turned out to be our tour guide. Jeanette and I were both exceedingly pleased with the tour and the tasting. Jeanette even bought a case of champagne to be shipped home and joined the Korbel Champagne club in which she’ll receive 3 bottles a month along with recipes, informative brochures, and a significant discount on both champagne and supplies from the Korbel catalog. I’d highly recommend an afternoon spent at Korbel to anyone who’s thinking about coming out to wine country. What a great time. Oh yeah, we had lunch at their deli there and the sandwiches that both of us had were amazingly tasty. Jeanette and I agreed that mine in particular, a thin sliced prime rib with caramelized onions and a some sort of dark sauce, was one of the best sandwiches I’ve ever had. After Korbel, we followed the river on the ocean where there were harbor seals and a single elephant seal basking on the sand at the mouth of the river. Heading back into San Francisco, we encountered ocean mist on the Golden Gate Bridge that was even thicker than when we’d been heading North. It was really cool and kind of spooky. We also chose to take the shoreline route around San Francisco, in order to avoid all the hills, which ran us by all of the piers and harbors on the North East side of the City. What a neat district that is. I don’t even want to imagine how expensive it must be to live there!

We had a small visitor in our campsite when we got back from our hike along the creek. For some reason, Jeanette wouldn't let me put it back where I found it. She wanted it separated from us by a stretch of pavement, so I let it go down on the bank of the creek. 

Day 32, Sunday, July 17

After another lazy morning and a breakfast of scrambled eggs, fresh strawberries, and cantaloupe we decided to head into town (Calistoga) and find out what wineries were in the area and available for touring/tastings. On our ride into Napa on Saturday, both Jeanette and I were stunned by just how may wineries were there. It seemed that every curve in the road had another winery on it, so we figured that some advice on what to see would be prudent, advice of the sort that you’d get at the Calistoga Chamber of Commerce. By the time we got into town it was about 11am and the temperature was already around 95 degrees. HOT, HOT, HOT. Jeanette had on my hot weather jacket, but I was wearing my one piece Aerostitch Roacrafter suit. I was literally basting in my own juices. Even once we were out of the riding suits we felt like we were roasting on a spit. We’d been told that Calistoga’s Chamber of commerce was "behind the train depot and a bit hard to find". What a humorous understatement. The only sign for it was half hidden at the back of an alley beside the old train depot, and the Chamber itself was a trailer office (like you see on construction sites) completely hidden from view by trees and storage trailers until you were right on top of it. Also, the sign in the window said "Open" and there was a woman sitting at the desk inside but the door was locked! Turns out that she was the only person working that day and had come in the back door and had completely forgotten to unlock the front even though it was already closing in on noon! After reading the available literature we decided to forgo any tours due to cost in favor of just riding around the valley and stopping wherever our fancies were struck. Our main stop was at Berringer Brothers winery. We were somewhat surprised to see that the tour of the facility (which we’d have had to wait a more than an hour for) was a bit expensive as was the wine tasting, neither of which we chose to participate in either activity. The combination the 100 degree heat and the seemingly prevalent attitude of the Berringer employees that the tourists were an unfortunate and annoying side affect of working at a winery made our visit something I’d not choose to repeat. Maybe it’d have been different if the weather hadn’t been so brutally hot and muggy, but neither Jeanette nor I deal well with hot weather, and both of us came away from the visit with a sour taste in our mouths. At that point we decided to head back to our camp site hoping that it’d be cooler for being in the woods. That turned out to be the absolute best decision. Once there we took a nice COOL hike along one of the park’s creeks and then headed back to our campsite for dinner. The simple spaghetti dinner we’d planned to have turned out to have flavor fitting of a gourmet restaurant. I don’t know whether it was our utterly exhausted state or our thankfulness for a respite from the heat, but we both swore that the spaghetti sauce we concocted was the best either of us had ever eaten. Combine that with garlic bread heated over the camp fire and another 6-pack of barley and hops and you’ve got yourself a GREAT evening! We both gorged ourselves and I don’t think either of us even rolled over once we turned in for the night!

looking up the beach to the North 

the mouth of 'salmon river' 

Same beautiful beach, same beautiful girl, same beautiful day! 

The 'salmon river'. If it'd been in Western North Carolina, it'd have been called a creek. It was teaming with trout. One guy who was down there with his young son said the trout were actually fingerling salmon 

Jeanette on the path headed down to the beach. You can just see the river to the left side of the picture 

What a great beach this was. I'm definitely going to spend some more time here later in my trip 

Day 31, Saturday, July 16

After a lazy morning and pancake breakfast, we broke camp and headed further up Hwy 1 to Fort Bragg. We’d only gone about 10 miles when we came across another beach (the outlet of Salmon Creek, I want to say). We decided to hike down with the intention off spending a half hour or so. We spent nearly 3 hours! It was one of the nicest beaches I’ve ever played on. It would have been any kid’s dream beach. There were driftwood forts all over. People had used the drift wood like Lincoln Logs and had constructed tepees, square forts, pathways and all sorts of other imaginary domains. The creek that emptied into the ocean at that point was full of great skipping rocks and had lots of areas where you could have gone swimming with some even deep enough to have dived into. Jeanette found a natural lounge chair depression on a piece of drift wood the size of a delivery van (it had to be part of the trunk of an ancient redwood tree) and I played around on the beach and in the creek. I felt like I was being transported back to my childhood days of playing in the creeks in Western North Carolina. What a treat! After leaving that beach we decided to head up to Fort Bragg. We’d been told that it was a cute touristy town with a nice little down town area to browse. We were told wrong. Ft Bragg had, so far as I could tell, essentially nothing to recommend it. Every store we looked at seemed to be of the sort where you walk out thinking "That was kind of interesting stuff, but why would anybody every buy any of it, and how on earth can they afford to pay their rent selling trinkets like that?" Late afternoon we decided that we ought to head on over to wine country. Earlier on my trip, I’d looked up camp sites in the Napa area and found one that kept on getting recommended over and over, Bothe Napa Valley State Park. Unfortunately, when I called Thursday to try to make reservations I was told that the park was completely booked up and that there was basically no chance of us getting a site. "However there’s a fair ground near by where you can pitch your tent and you can come back to the park for showers." Both Jeanette and I figured that, given the run of good luck we were having on this trip so far, that we’d try it anyway. We pulled up to the visitors center at around 8:30, confident that we were going to be told that we were going to have to sleep out in the barn. Not so. According to the ranger we talked with, she’d already turned away half a dozen families looking for a camp site but just realized that she’d overlooked their overflow campsite which was still sitting empty. Turns out that the overflow campsite was far and away the best site in the entire park. Most of the other campsites in the park weren’t even remotely as nice as ours. Good proximity to the bath house, fully shaded (most of the other sites were full sun sites), no artificial lights, smooth level tent site, and completely hidden from all neighboring campsites. Perfect! Campfire roasted hot dogs and a 6-pack of suds made it a prefect night. Oh yeah…NO mosquitoes!

another deserted beach. We had a great time playing around in the sand. The sand is novel for someone who's grown up with the East Coast sand because it's not so much sand as it is a whole bunch of tiny shiny pebbles. 

The flowers came in red, but the beatles didn't 

There were vines with bundles of yellow flowers and matching beatles every where! 

All of this can be yours if you call within the next 15 minutes and if you mention that you saw this ad on TV we'll throw in this big expanse of water FOR FREE! 

one of the deserted beaches we climbed down to 

Jeanette and me in Bodega Bay. The weather was PERFECT for an ocean side ride! 

Day 30, Friday, July 15

I unloaded a bunch of stuff from the trailer (everything except a few days clothes and camping gear) to make room for Jeanette’s gear and headed out to meet her at the San Francisco airport. Jeanette’s plane arrived at 9:30am and I arrived at the airport at almost exactly 9:30. Great luck and perfect timing! Little did I know that this was to be theme for our entire weekend! From the airport we headed through San Francisco. The combination of me, Jeanette, the trailer, and our gear was definitely more than the motorcycle’s drive train was happy with. Having just replaced the clutch, I was fearful of having to replace it again in short order. Unfortunately, we chose the wrong route for getting to the Golden Gate Bridge from the airport. We went through the town rather than going around it at water level. Apparently going through San Francisco, the transportation engineers have determined that the best way to manage traffic it to make sure that you catch EVERY DAMNED STOP LIGHT on red. And San Fran being where it is, each red light is at the top of a hill. NO fun for me or for the motorcycle. I’d intended to stop at the Golden Gate Bridge to take some pictures but the ocean fog was incredibly thick and only about the bottom 20 feet of the pilings of the bridge were visible. Even when on the bridge, you couldn’t see the suspension cables if they were more than about 30 feet away. For someone not used to the fog (both Jeanette and me) the fog was really cool and kind of eerie. From there we hopped on Highway 1 and headed up the coast. At the airport, Jeanette and I had looked at the road map and reached the conclusion that there were enough campsites along the coast that we’d just wing it on deciding where to stop for the night. Several times, when there was a break in the fog we pulled over to look down at the ocean and every time we chanced to pull over at a place that had a path down the beach and also every time we were the only people on the entire beach! It was great! When we got tired of driving for the day we started looking for campsites. We passed quite a few that were completely booked up and a few that would have made great comedy subjects for Jeff Foxworthy (beat up camper trailers parked wall to wall, each resplendent with layers of plastic nick knacks in all visible windows, astro turf sitting areas, beat up aluminum folding chairs, empty beer cans, and the mandatory annoying yappy lap dog). Fine camping fare if that’s what you’re into, but neither Jeanette nor I felt like donning old stained white tank top undershirts shirts, 1970’s era shorts, and bedroom slippers. So we kept on… At Manchester Beach State Park, we pulled off highway 1 to go down and play in the water, and accidentally stumbled onto the Manchester Beach KOA. What luck. The place is absolutely beautiful. In fact I’ve never stayed in a campground anywhere which was even remotely as clean as this KOA. The grounds were completely manicured, the bathrooms were so clean that you could practically have eaten off the floors, the staff was super friendly, all the trees and shrubs were perfectly pruned, the tent sites were level and shaded, and they even scrubbed down the barbeque grills and cleaned out the ashes from all of the fire pits every morning. It was great!

Day 29, Thursday, July 14

Got to Steve and Heidi’s house at around 11am today and after a little socializing and a bit of e-mail. I crashed out in their spare bed room. I was utterly exhausted, but feeling very good about my decision to replan my trip. The painful realization I’ve come to is that I’m over packed and am going to have to lose a fair amount of weight out of the trailer. I'm convinced that the excessive weight is why I burned out my clutch. About the only way to lose as much weight as I need is to ship my mountain bike and all related tools and gear back home. That's a heart breaker of a decision since I’d initially planned to get in a lot of riding on this trip. However I’ve not had the chance to use the bike yet and having it with me is making packing the trailer a real nuisance. (My battle tank of a high school grammar teacher would be rolling over in her grave seeing me start that sentence with "however"!) I’ll be disappointed to send it home but it’ll sure ease the load on the drive train of my motorcycle. I DEFINITELY don’t want to replace another clutch on this trip.

Day 27, Wednesday, July 13

Picked up my motorcycle today at Salt Lake BMW. They’d completed the job no problem. Problem, was that the temperature was about 105 F. I’ve never ridden in weather that hot before. It’s absolutely miserable. Even wearing my fully ventilated hot weather suit, I felt like I was going to die. Usually in moderately hot weather, I ride with my helmet’s visor partially or fully open to increase air flow to my head. However, when the temp’s 105 you have to keep the visor fully closed because 105 deg air hitting your face at 70 mph feels like you’re sticking your face into the door of a blast furnace. It burns badly. But then with the helmet closed, the sweat was coming pouring down like a river and stinging my eyes. I’m definitely not cut out to live in the desert South West. I’d pretty much made that conclusion a year ago when I took a trip to Moab with Asad Khan, Joe Ruthenberg, Kevin Mitchell, and Andreas Schulne, but now I’m 100% sure of it. That said, I had to completely change my plans of leaving this afternoon. There’s no way I’d ever be able to survive the 115 deg heat of riding across Nevada during the day time. So I packed my trailer and got my stuff all ready to go and took a nap in the afternoon. I woke back up at 9:00pm, said goodbye and thank you to TJ and headed out at 10pm. I rode the 700 miles to Sacramento straight through the night. Very tiring but absolutely the right decision. I had somewhere between zero and no desire to see Nevada during the day and the night temperatures were quite comfortable. The other thing I did while on my through-the-night trek was to come to the realization that I needed to replan my trip. Originally I’d planned this leg of my trip to CA as an out and back venture with the intent of heading down into CO to visit Jim and Suzanne Roelof followed by heading down into the real desert South West. I quickly came to the conclusion that that part of my trip will have to wait. Instead I’ll head straight North after this weekend to enjoy the milder climes of Oregon, Washington, and Canada.

Day 26, Tuesday, July 12

Suzy and Zeke headed out to Michigan this morning to spend a couple of weeks with Suzy’s parents. I spent most of the day today working on getting pictures and journal entries completed so I can get my blog webpage started. My motorcycle won’t be completed until around noon tomorrow. That means I’ll have to drive into the LATE night to make it to Sacramento and Steve and Heidi Li by Thursday.

Day 25, Monday, July 11

After a late start this morning, we headed over to some friends at a condo and to spend a day around the pool there. More great people to meet here. I got invites to stay at people’s homes in Cincinnati OH and in Lake Tahoe. It’s not likely I’ll make it to Cincinnati but there’s a definite possibility of making it to Lake Tahoe.

Day 24, Sunday, July 10

I spent most of today working on the computer at the house organizing photos and working on my journal. Nice relaxing day with nothing planned. Nice to have this sort of day every once in a while. I also joined TJ at a house he had been contracted to photograph. This place was amazing. Almost makes me want to strive to be a millionaire when I’m done with this trip. When we got back to their house, TJ showed me some of the pictures he’s taken of houses in the area. He is really quite talented as a photographer and if you’ve got a house you’re looking to sell in the area he’s definitely the guy for you!

Day 23, Saturday, July 9

I spent this morning hanging out with TJ, Suzy, and Zeke in Park City. TJ’s step dad runs a construction/contractor firm and was tearing down an old house in Park City. This morning, he let Zeke sit in the cab of the back hoe as he used it to tear down part of the house. Zeke was smiling from ear to ear. What a cool experience for a 2 year old. He kept on saying "I tore down a house!" Heck, *I* would have enjoyed the experience myself, sitting in the cab, Zeke must have thought it was outstanding!
This evening we all went to a free concert by the Jerry Garcia Band at the Canyon Resort in Park City followed by pizza and drinks afterwards.

TJ, Suzy, Zeke and me in Heber City. I am incredibly grateful to these three for taking me into their home and making me feel like family! 

Day 22, Friday, July 8

Well, when I took the bike back to the dealer this morning, they confirmed my fears. The clutch is done for. Needs to be repaired/replaced, and it definitely won’t make it over the mountain range to San Francisco where there’s another BMW dealership in a more interesting location. As though that’s not enough, they’ve done 2 clutch jobs already this week and are now out of parts, AND they can’t get parts until tomorrow, AND the shop is completely booked already on Saturday, AND they’re not open on Monday, AND the work will take all day Tuesday, AND they may even need to continue some of the work on Wednesday morning. CRAP, CRAP, CRAP, CRAP!!! At least they gave me a loaner motorcycle, a Triumph Bonneville, for the weekend. Well, yeah, I’ve got a loaner motorcycle, but I’m in Salt Lake city, it's 105 degrees and smoggy today and the Mormons aren't exactly known for their Partying. Sooo riding would be miserable (about like holding a hair dryer on HIGH directly in your eye), partying is pretty much out, and I’m at a KOA which, while quite nice inside, is in a bad area of town right by an EXTREMELY active freight train line and with the airport less than a mile away. Not exactly how I wanted to spend the better part of a week.
Enter my brother Peter (thank you, thank you, thank you!) I called Pete to whine about my situation and he immediately says "I think I can hook you up, let me call you back in about 20 minutes." Turns out that Pete’s ex girlfriend, Lara, has a sister, Suzie Liese who lives near Park City UT with her husband TJ and their 2 year old son, Zeke (Ezekiel). What a hook up! I called TJ and within an hour and a half, TJ was at the KOA picking me up and taking me out to join them at their place. TJ, it turns out is an ex-pro snow boarder and now does professional photography of cost-no-issue mansions in the Park City Area for real estate listings. Also just so happens that TJ does photography work for the Canyons ski resort there in Park City and that his Mom also owns a time share there. So in one day I went from stuck at a KOA at, as TJ puts it, the corner of Crack Ave and Meth Street in Salt Lake City to joining TJ’s and Suzy’s families at a gathering around the heated pool of a luxury ski resort. HOW COOL IS THAT?!?!? After sitting around the pool and mingling with their families, we went back to their house and I set my tent up in their back yard. What a great ending to a ratty day. Oh yeah, forgot to mention, when TJ was driving out to pick me up, towing his snow mobile trailer so that we could load my motorcycle trailer in the back, his trailer came off the hitch at 65 – 70 mph! The trailer only hung on by the safety chain and from the damage to the trailer, we could see that it had swung to nearly 90 degrees to the van. It’s amazing that no more damage was done, that he didn’t lose control, that the trailer didn’t hit any other motorist, and that there was basically nothing bad that came of it. One of the RV drivers at the KOA had all the tools we needed to repair the trailer to nearly good as new.

Day 21, Thursday, July 7

It turns out that the BMW dealership is just 7 miles down the road from the KOA I’m staying at. How convenient. I took the bike there at 9 this morning and after test riding a few motorcycles (including a Triumph Rocket III, 2.3 liter in line 3-cylinder with 140 hp and 150 lb-feet of torque ... there are a lot of cars on the market with smaller engines) came back to the camp ground on a loaner motorcycle and spent the day working on my journal. Whoo Hoo! I’ve got it up to date once again! When I picked my bike up from the dealer this afternoon (after another $600 chunk of my budget got spent) they told me that they’d done the necessary maintenance and the clutch wasn’t/isn’t a problem. After driving the bike around this evening after they closed, I’m afraid I disagree. The clutch is definitely slipping. I just hope it’s either something they can adjust or that the fix can wait until I get over to Sacramento and can take the motorcycle to the San Francisco dealership. There’s gotta be more to do in San Fran than there is here in Salt Lake City. My initial plan was to pack up all of my stuff tonight and aim to tear out of here at about 4 or 5 in the morning tomorrow because it’s supposed to top 100 degrees here tomorrow. Unfortunately, since I’ve got to take the motorcycle back to the dealership tomorrow and can’t do so until 9, I don’t know how far I’ll get driving tomorrow (if I get anywhere at all). All I can do is to keep my fingers crossed.

Day 20, Wednesday, July 6

Today I drove from the Coulter Bay campground in the Tetons to Salt Lake City. The ride through much of Wyoming was utterly monotonous. Also, somebody needs to inform the WY board of transportation that when you’re going to repave a highway, it’s possible to do it one side at a time. I say this because in several places, traffic stopped for a half hour because the road crews had (1) decided to dig a culvert ditch across both lanes of the highway, (2) & (3) decided to rip up a couple of miles of highway for repaving. In both sections of highway they'd ripped up, they made absolutely no effort to keep in mind the concerns of motorcyclists. The pilot car lead the traffic across multiple sets of criss crossed diagonal ruts in loose gravel, over sloped loose gravel sections, and diagonally across multiple level changes in the road. I thought I was going to go down several times but each time the bike slid around a bit (front and rear tires sliding in unison is just about enough to make a guy wet himself) and straightened out. Each time I got back to paved highway I found myself desperately wanting a place to pull over and sooth my nerves but both times the shoulder was all torn up, steeply sloped, and covered with loose gravel.
I pulled into the KOA at Salt Lake City around 4pm and had plenty of day light hours to set up the tent and make dinner. My neighbors Burt and Jane Yin are from the San Fran area and they offered me lodging when I was passing through. You meet the nicest people when you’re camping. They, as well as several other groups in the campground, are in town attending a barber shop singing convention. Burt tells me there are groups from all over the world an that many of them aren’t quartets but in fact have as many as 20 or 30 people.

a back cove of Leigh Lake 

Leigh Lake 

Here you can see how incredibly clear the water is. Don't know how far away the opposite shore was but it'd have been too far for me to throw a stone across. Greater than 50 yards? 

Tetons from Leigh Lake