Day 17—Redwood National Forest, CA to Bandon, Oregon

We wake up in a puddle. The tents bottom layer is water proof, which is keeping us from being totally soaked. The water on one side is about 3 inches up on my side. Its been raining all night Lauren tells me and its raining again now. Eventually we decided to get out of the tent, normally we get up around 7am, cook breakfast and make coffee. But today its still raining and its 8am, lets just go I say. We pack in the rain, both of us are getting wet and changing into motorcycle gear in the rain with no shelter and no dry place to stand is a developed skill. But this morning its hard because we haven’t eaten. By the time all the gear is packed, we are wet inside and out. Its slow going to the highway, our visors fog up, and Lauren is cold. Not good, it’s a real trick warming up on the bike. We hit the 101 and its like being in front of a giant blow dryer. I make some cheese joke about blow dryers, as our gear begins to dry in the seemingly warm coastal wind.

The deal was, not making breakfast we had to stop at the first place. We filled up on French toast, eggs , beacon and coffee. Met yet another motorcycle couple, chatted with them a bit and hit the road.

After about 2 hours, we have stopped at the Port Hole on gold beach. I’m having the fish and chips, Yum!

~devin

Today started out wet, but got nicer and nicer. We followed the coast the entire way and it was gorgeous! It is fun on the curvy roads going up and down, and the coastline is amazing. It is a bit misty in some places, but not too bad. Our campsite tonight is in a state park in Bandon, where apparently there is the nicest part of the Oregon Coast to see. It started raining again tonight, so I think we will try and see it tomorrow. We were able to dry out all of our soaking gear, and so hopefully will not end up in a puddle tomorrow!

-Lauren

Day 16—Redding, CA to Red wood National Forest CA (just below Crescent City)

We wake up in the hotel. Nice, I’m warm and I can just crawl out of bed and take three steps and turn on the coffee machine. Normally, it takes about ten minutes to boil the water after setting up the stove. We have an easy morning as Lauren makes some calls for school and I play on the computer a bit. After that we head down to lumberjacks restaurant for our free hot breakfast, That AAA is really nice to have. Of course on all the restaurant TVs its tuned into wood chopping competitions. We ride out about 11am to hit the 299.

On our travels so far we have met a quite a few bikers and the majority of them know the road we are about to take. I thought the mountain pass was curvy! this was one big windy hairpin after windy hair pin. The road from the air probably looks like a scribble on the landscape. Anyway it was lots of fun. Safe fun;) and Lauren didn’t get motion sickness! Which I;ve heard happens, but not on this trip.

The rest of the ride was fairly normal, lots of road construction, riding through vallys following the river. As we get closer to the coast we both start to get more excited. We can sence it. I’ve been missing the ocean and we have ridin 7000km and its right around the corner. The landscape starts to change and the smell of air has the faint hint of salt. Finally we come around a corner and there it is, the OCEAN! Clam Beach is the next exit, we take it, pull into the parking lot, drop our gear and head to the water. “Do you think are stuff will get stolen?” I say, but neither one of us make a move to head back. Both of us drawn to the water. Through the sand in motorcycle boots is slow going and the tide is way out so it takes some time. But finally we make it and its worth it. The ocean, we made it!

We ride about 24 mile down the road to the Red Wood National Park and camp in the red woods. How beautiful.

~devin

Day 15—Lake Tahoe, California to Redding California

Woke up this morning cold, not sure how cold it got last night, but there’s condensation on the tent and a thick layer of frost on the bike and picnic table.

Packing seems to move quickly, we both have our routines, its almost like a system now. And the bags seem to get more compact. Either we are leaving things behind at each campsite or we can really pack.

Today was one of the first days that we used the charger. We have a wire tap off the battery to a cigarette lighter accessory. Basically we can charge all of our stuff on the road. Its cool, especially if our com unit runs out of juice, we can just plug it in and charge it up. The down side is when it rains, we have to pull over right away or it will fry the recharging system.

We make good time on the road, riding through a giant pine forest. We rise up to 5900 ft, snow fills in the ditches. From what we can gather from locals, we missed the snow fall by a day and a thunderstorm was expected last night but never came. Lucky, which reminds me, we are in a Travel Lodge watching TV and all over the news is the tornado that hit Joplin, Missouri, on day 5 we traveled just below on interstate 44.

The windy road is awesome! We will ride up this amazing mountain (Lassen Volcanic National Park, CA), on hwy 89. The ride up is incredible, although most of the climbing was done yesterday. We begin heading back down and the speed limit is 65 mph (112kmph) and theres a turn right, then a turn left. A corner comes up with a 35mph sign on it. We gear down and take it at a respectable speed. The next corner almost immediately after is 25 mph then another at 30 and another at 25mph. A straight stretch comes up and we are back at 65mph and repeat. we fly keeping the pace.

~devin

Day 14—Lone Pine to Lake Tahoe (Meeks Bay), California

Today we rode north for one of the first times on our trip. We climbed into the alpine regions and were very happy to be in pine forested mountains and lots of curvy roads. It is harder on Devin, but I am really enjoying the riding because I am not getting sick at all!

Today we rode north for one of the first times on our trip. We climbed into the alpine regions and were very happy to be in pine forested mountains and lots of curvy roads. It is harder on Devin, but I am really enjoying the riding because I am not getting sick at all! Either it is because I am out in the fresh air, or that I am really part of the road and feel like I am travelling, rather than just sitting still in a car. It is wonderful! We travelled through mountains, then down into open valleys. We took the road near Yosemite, but the road through the park was closed. We took the 89 up to the Lake Tahoe area. And it was winding! The scenery was incredible and we stopped at this tiny town for some ice cream.

Lake Tahoe was amazing! It is huge and beautiful. But I can see that it would get busy in the winter and summer. This area has had lots of snow in the past month, and the hills are still open in some places. As we climbed into the Lake Tahoe region, it got pretty cold. We are camping on the shores of Lake Tahoe and had are having a great fire! We collected these huge pinecones and are burning them. It is very fun! But no marshmallows to roast, unfortunately.

-Lauren

We put fire wood in the tail bag. who knew?

~devin

Day 13—Las Vegas, Nevada to Lone Pine, California

Last night we drove into Las Vegas and saw the lights. But it was pretty hot, so we didn’t stay too long. We are often really tired at the end of a day, so our nights have been early. Today we ended up on the high desert of the eastern Sierra Nevada’s in California. We started near Las Vegas, drove up to Death Valley, through Death Valley, and down into the eastern Sierras. Death Valley was amazing, but HOT HOT HOT!


(It was so hot we had to stuff ice in our pockets! Again! I crushed up some ice and put it in my helmet in a zip lock. But from crushing it there was a small hole in the bag and as we rode the ice began to melt in my helmet and down my right side into my ear. It was a weird feeling, like my head was leaking.
~devin)

The desert in the valley was amazing and totally different from the other Nevada deserts. But even riding, we were way too hot. It was like we were in an oven! The hottest part was at the lowest point, somewhere 250 feet BELOW sea level.

We started to climb, and quickly the air got cooler. We ended up above 5,000 feet above sea level, and the change in elevation was incredible. There were sand dunes in the middle of valleys, even up at the high elevations. The road was curvy and definitely fun!

After coming out of Death Valley, we stopped at Lone Pine Film history museum in Lone Pine, a location where tons of old westerns have been made in the Alabama Hills. We stayed behind the Alabama Hills in the Lone Pine State Campground at the base of Mt. Whitney, one of the highest peaks in the US. The Hills were amazing, with round rocks piled in weird formations. To the east were the mountains of Death Valley, and to the west were the Sierras. It was an incredible view, and in the evening, there was a thunderstorm over the eastern mountains which lit up the sky. This was one of my favourite campsites and views.

-Lauren

What an amazing ride, Death valley is a must see! as you can see we are still wearing all our gear. We took out the warm layers but its still hot! We got to this one look out, stopped the bike and immediately start to strip, at the same time a tour bus pulls up and people begin to pile out of their perfectly air conditioned bus to see two white Canadians wip off their cloths as fast as possible. We got a few looks, and a tan, well I got a tan.

~Devin

Day 12—Fredonia, Arizona to Lake Mead, Las Vegas, Nevada

Today was a day of state-changing. We started in Arizona, went into Utah, back into Arizona, then Nevada, into Arizona, and back to Nevada. We ended up just outside of Las Vegas, in the Lake Mead Recreation Area. It was a HOT day. We had a great breakfast at the Merry Wives diner in Utah, than dropped back into Arizona. The country was beautiful, with red cliffs and hills, and open range land. It changed to desert as we passed into Nevada, and the elevation drop was incredible. We followed the Virgin River down, down, down, through an amazing canyon into Nevada. We turned off the interstate to follow the scenic route around Lake Mead to the Hoover Dam. The drive was amazing, with lots of bikers and beautiful views. There were these amazing red rocks everywhere, and an entire valley called the Valley of Fire because it was so red. It was a great, but hot drive. We stopped at one rest stop for the view and a break and spotted two big horn sheep. They watched us and we watched them and then they jumped around for a bit. We ended up at the Hoover Dam, where we crossed into Arizona for a couple of minutes again. The Dam was pretty amazing, built into a crevice, which created Lake Mead behind it. But it was hot, and when we got to our campsite on the shores of Lake Mead, I was pretty tired and hot. Our campsite was surrounded by these huge blooming bushes of pink and white flowers. It was pretty neat!

-Lauren

I really wanted to see the strip. We headed out around night fall and arrived about 30 minutes later. Rode down the strip and headed back. It was crazy! So many people and taxies and crazy lights and stores and casinos. Next time I go, I will be walking and drinking. I've got some GoPro footage I'll try and show some time.

~Devin