Day 4, May 21

 

May 21


May 21, Sunday, 299 mile ride, total trip about 951 miles total.

Relive: https://www.relive.cc/view/vPv4RBeo8R6

Parting is such sweet sorrow.  A great night, wonderful to reconnect, and not enough time spent at my sisters.  Amazing to see seven years of growth for Charlie, strapping young man for sure!

Life is good as we have found a spot to camp for the night, Northshore, california campground, just off lake Britton.  It is offline, so not able to post, but should be able to soon.

Up at 6, wrote some, and worked on loading the bike, by 7am, it was a lively kitchen, drinking coffee, laughing, the aroma of eggs and bacon.  A beautiful morning for sure with clear blue cool California skies. I love how my sister Nubee's house has such a cool vibe!  So good to see her, and I hope it doesn't take me another seven years before I'm back again.   

Breakfast loaded, bikes loaded and many multiple hugs several times over, multiple photos, we finally head out.  But, all is for not, as we can't leave quit yet.  Lol, bikes can't actuate the gate, so amazing and wonderful Emma drives over to open the gate for us.

Leaving is never an easy or simple task, as we try to leave, a sherif has us go in the opposite direction.  Hmm. So he has a gun, I'm not going to argue...  so off we go, opposite direction, we get to the end of that st, and we are blocked again, so we go in yet another direction.  It looks like we have ridden into the midst of some foot race.  We finally escape and ride to Shasta dam. 

Each days ride is good, but gets better.  Lots of lafter and life over the intercom, mixed with music and the road.  We agree driving just over the speed limit, but not totally keeping up with the Jones on the autobond works well. We pass motorcycles with camping gear headed north.  The ride is nice and we finally pass of lake shasta. Pulling down a road that apparently is mostly loose gravel we stop about a mile down and get off the bikes to hydrate, it is super hot today.  A truck pulls up and the couple recommend burney area, we agree it sounds good.  After enjoying the lake for a bit, we head to shasta dam.

Arriving at the dam, we find it gated and guarded.  Nice guy looks at our bikes and asks (while sorta nodding his head up and down) you guys headed to the motorcycle off road area across the dam ( wink wink nod nod), of course we are right Howard.. we need to show our licenses and he let's us cross, super cool.  It is an amazing view.  We tool around and head back over the dam, again enjoying the view. Once over we stop to get organized and hydrate, it is pretty hot out.

Heading to Burney Ffalls is nice, we ride in elevation with green trees lining the road, cool and funtastic twisty roads.

We make it to our campground of choice only to find reservations are needed and they need to be 25 hours in advance, ugg failure, so Howard gets some ideas and we try Dusty a camp ground a few miles up  but it is full.  So we continue on and find a place right on the lake hot showers, tap water free firewood and sup clean. It's a good omen when we pull and there is a deer just hanging out.

We clean up, eat some beef jerky, while we set up our tents.it is about 445pm, and a cool breeze off the lake keeps us company as we setup camp.  I ask Howard about my snoring, he replies yes, and look he had found some ear plugs in his tent, we both laugh.

After I shower, I heat up some saimine and eat as we sit around the fire feeding the mosquitos. It is now 10pm, I've used Howard's satellite text gizmo to let the spouses know we are OK. And it is now time for me to sign off to another great day of riding in circles. Ps I left a giant bag of stuff at nubees to ship home. Including my laptop, so far I've done all blog posting via my cellphone.

Ride on dudes and dudettes

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