dry, trees, and drier

So this marked the beginning of my most favorite day of riding. With a late start we headed on southward. 

on Ladybird Johnson trail among the redwoods

i climbed the side of a redwood to get the pic

stopped and cooked lunch on rt 1

We road on the avenue of the giants that was amazing, then hit the famous rt 1. lets just say our bikes got lighter as we scraped and ground our way around some of the best corners ever.

It was just glorious riding. Chad was leading for quite a while and after nate said it was amazing to watch all the bikes snaking along through the cornings chad came on the radio and said in a sad pouty voice “I want to ride in the back” so he did, and Dwayne continued to lead us through the slithering maze of corners and on to rt 40 that was more of the same.

we met this couple (Mark and Katie i think) along our way. they have been on the road for 4 months as a honey moon. and they also are headed to panama. hopefully our paths cross again.

We camped north east of Sacramento for the evening then headed into meet Hannah Carlsons (former trip team member/blog updater/chads ridding buddy) uncle, Mr Kent Carlson and family. Kent came and met us a few miles from his house and then escorted us on his nice and clean Harley Davidson. It had to look funny having a clean classic bike followed closely by five tall dirty and just getting broken in adventure bikes. The Carlsons put us up for the night, after taking us out to a very sweet local pub for dinner.

in the van on the way back from dinner.

breakfast with the Carlsons

work day on the bike

The next day we worked on our bikes and had some very good meals prepared for us. So a special thanks to Kent and his wonderful family for allowing us to crash in his house and making things dirty and smelly. We then headed out toward Yosemite NP. So I’d like to take this time to vent a bit about national parks. Lets just say I’m not a real big fan. Way to many people, way to commercialized and the sticker selection leaves a bit to be desired. to be honest the camp sites are all blurring together, and it gets hard to remember where we camped even the night before. But this evening we headed back to a reservoir that was feed by creeks. And along the way we kept seeing these spiders that were the size of my hand!

this evening nate had like 5 drops in an hour. i think his total is 15

bones dry campsite

Yosemite

note the large spider in the lower left corner!

a little swimming

my breakfast sandwhich. yummmmmm

We did get to camp by water even though it was a little creek we rambled down it looking for something big enough to dunk our heads it. This is also the site that I must of bumped into poison ivy at some point, then I used the “bathroom” so you can assume the places that got itchy. Not good. The worst part is that when you get poison its best to keep it cool and let it have air. Well as we were headed to death valley and Nevada the first one is not really an option, and as for giving it air that one is basically ruled out as well due to having to wear pants while doing basically anything. So anyway we drove through sequoia national park. We checked out General Sherman the largest tree in the world (by volume) then of course because it was a national park we hit road construction. And sat for an 40 minutes in the sun waiting for construction to let us through.

playing hearts while in road construction

We had planed on driving over to death valley and possibly camp there but it was WAY further then what we thought and I tried to find a short cut with map quest and it took us to roads that where gated and impassible. So we headed out and around a bit and somehow didn’t get terribly lost and got some directions form ladies at the gas station. Though it seems that we do quite a few U turns when I lead. We found a decent camp site. Though it was crazy dry