Sep 072010
 

Ashe along Highway 395 north of Tom's Place

Get­ting out of the tent this brisk and beau­ti­ful morn­ing I walked the 200 yards over to Rock Creek Lake and poked around a bit enjoy­ing being in the High Sier­ras. I then packed up and rode over to the near­by Pie in the Sky Restau­rant only to dis­cov­er that I was one hour too early. 

So I road off and down Rock Creek to High­way 395 and north to the scenic June Lakes Loop (all the hype is well placed) then con­tin­ued up 395 to Lee Vin­ing for lunch and a stop at Mono Lake. On north anoth­er 60 miles to high­way 89 where I turned west then north again to cov­er about 40 miles of friend Tom’s 113 mile 2009 Death Ride course, a good and beau­ti­ful choice. I stopped around 4:30 in a restau­rant in Tahoe City for a deli­cious and MUCH over­due turkey burger. 

Rid­ing around the west shore of Lake Tahoe to arrive at the burg­er was stun­ning. After the burg­er I planned on head­ing on up 89 to 49 then look for a place to camp. I went into three ade­quate camp­grounds but I would have been the only one in any of the three so rode out of each. I was just enough fright­ened to not wish to stay, oh well.

It was a spec­tac­u­lar evening so I road to the end of 49 then on to the end of 70 again rejoin­ing high­way 395. This 65 miles was through amaz­ing long and beau­ti­ful val­leys of cat­tle ranches.

It seemed about 35 min­utes to dark as I arrived at the junc­ture with high­way 395 and look­ing on the map north saw few choic­es for accom­mo­da­tion so I rode south 23 miles to Reno and grate­ful­ly found and stayed the night in a Super 8 Motel.

Jour­ney­ing forth unchart­ed on a motor­cy­cle has lots of sim­i­lar­i­ties to bicy­cle tour­ing, e.g. eas­i­ly start­ing up con­ver­sa­tions with folks or as with my lunch stop today in Lee Vin­ing some­one com­ing over to my table and ask­ing me to join him. Also, there is the sim­i­lar feel­ing of just being out there in the envi­ron­ment rather than mov­ing along in an iso­lat­ing glass and steel bubble.

All in all I am lov­ing doing this. As usu­al, almost the only time I am not enjoy­ing it is when I’ve rid­den too long with­out stop­ping OR have gone TOO long with­out eat­ing. Noth­ing new there.

 Posted by at 6:00 pm

  3 Responses to “Rock Creek Lake to Reno (307 miles)”

  1. OK. I final­ly got to a com­put­er that Steve Jobs allows flash to run on. Great slide show! I like the sto­ry told by the cap­tions. That guy on the Mon­dia was very inter­est­ing. Did he know that dBASE was writ­ten with­in walk­ing dis­tance of the Mon­trose bicy­cle shop? Did he know that next to it was a sun­glass­es store and one day the authors of dBASE real­ized if you bought even non-per­scrip­tion lens­es at t glass­es store the com­pa­ny would reim­burse you?

  2. I love the way you have put your blog togeth­er Ashe! Nice sto­ry and pho­tos. It makes me want to get up and go! Thank you!!

  3. What an adven­ture. Can’t see the pic­tures but I will try again on the Mac tomor­row. Are u using a nextgen gallery? Do you car­ry some food with you on the bike? How about get­ting used to those emote camp­grounds by just tak­ing a quick nap dur­ing the day? Look­ing for­ward to the rest of the installments.

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