Southwest Tour - Day 5
Day 5 - San Jose to Las Vegas NV, 635 miles
I'm back from the trip now, but still have some catching up to do. When I got to the hotel in Las Vegas, after showering up and grabbing dinner at the hotel next door (this time I substituted a chocolate cream pie for beer), I got back to the hotel to find that Smugmug was doing a service update. Since I couldn't upload pictures, I didn't do my daily blog update either, and instead passed out for an early night.
Friday was a trip of many highs. Having gotten the work done on the bike in San Jose and wrapping up a week worth of meetings, it was good to be back on the bike ... new shoes and new clutch working perfectly. What had originally been planned as a 5:00am start, things wouldn't actually get started until 6:30am. To my surprise, rush hour getting out of San Jose was pretty light. Either it was because so many people took off work Friday to make for a long weekend, or if I was just heading away from where everyone else was going to, it made for a nice commute out of town.
My first stop was to be Yosemite National Park, on my way to Nevada. When looking at the map to plot this trip, I never realized how close Yosemite was to the Bay area, so this would be a great time to run through there. Zooming in on Yosemite a little more, I noticed a mountain pass called Tioga. I remembered a discussion about Tioga Pass over on the BMW SportTouring forum, so I did a little more digging on the subject. The Tioga Pass had just opened for the year on May 11th. Only a couple weeks earlier, they had plowed the road to clear all the snow, and done any necessary road repairs to open the pass. Being this early in the season, I knew the scenery would be fantastic, and I was hoping that by hitting it on Friday I would miss any of the holiday weekend traffic.
On the way into Yosemite on CA120, the first hint of nature's beauty came from the Don Pedro Reservoir.
Just up the road from the Reservoir was the entrance to Yosemite. Speed limits inside the park where significantly lower, 35-45mph, but no matter as the number of stops I would take for pictures pretty well negated any speed I would have made through the park if there were higher speed limits.
There were a couple of places where there was water flowing down over the landscaped rocks as the snow and ice melted from the caps. I was hoping to get a picture of one, but I didn't find the right one without a significant amount of car traffic already around it.
As I worked my way east through Yosemite, the elevation was slowly climbing. The highest point in Yosemite would end up being over 9900 feet above sea level, it was the climbing in elevation that brought on more of the snow ... along with much cooler temperatures.
Just before I hit the Tioga Pass, I'd come up on an incredible lake, nestled in the higher elevations, surrounded by hard rock and spectacular trees:
From there it was over to Tioga Pass, and descending into the town of Lee Vining. After getting several tips about the the Mobile gas station in Lee Vining (Hank, the Exxon turned Mobile), I had planned on making that my lunch destination. The food court inside the Mobile is called Whoa Nellie Deli. Based on the recommendations of others, I went with the World Famous Fish Tacos. Ohhhh ... incredible! The air outside still had a nice chill to it, but to spend a half hour or so sitting outside, at that picnic table, overlooking Mono Lake to the East ... definitely good times.
After finishing up in Lee Vining, it was time to head towards Rachel NV for a trip along the Extraterrestrial Highway. My second concern when planning this route was that I had learned that there was to be some big UFO spotter event in Rachel over the Memorial Day weekend. Again, I was hoping to make it out there before the crowd.
Along the way to Rachel, immediately upon leaving Lee Vining, was a trip out through the Inyo National Forest. Just to the east of the Mono Lake area, the forest was pretty scorched, looking like it had recently been involved in one of the area's wildfires in the not to distant past.
At Benton, I would pick up US6 and continue heading East. US6 would run into US95, and from there to Tonopah NV. There, US95 continues south, but I would continue running east on US6 towards NV375. Just before coming up on NV375, I would have my only deer scare of the trip. Coming upon what looked to be a recent deer hit, I let myself get distracted by that and didn't notice the two deer standing in the left side oncoming lane as I round the next turn. Hard on the brakes, the two deer would dash off the road away from me, with nothing more to come of it from that.
Making the turnoff from US6 onto NV375, I was now headed south/southeast towards Rachel. There were signs up at US6 and all along NV375 warning of low flying aircraft, but I never saw any. Maybe the signs were referring to us motorcycles, but more likely it was a training area for the flights out of Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas. Or maybe they meant the secret flights into Area 51, which was also near by.
Finally hitting Rachel, I pulled into the Little Ale Inn (Little Alien) bar and motel. Since there was a sign for the ET highway just outside of town, it made a good time to stop for pictures, plus pick up a tshirt for Cass.
With the convention going on this weekend, it was readily apparent that there are people out here who still firmly believe that area 51 is a UFO mecca. On that note, it was time for me to get the wheels turning again and get on to Vegas before night fall.
The rest of the ride into North Las Vegas would be uneventful. I made it to the hotel just as sunset. Today being the warmest day I've had to ride through this trip, I decided a shower before dinner was appropriate, followed by dinner.
Tomorrow would be the longest day of the trip ... only I didn't realize just how long yet.
I'm back from the trip now, but still have some catching up to do. When I got to the hotel in Las Vegas, after showering up and grabbing dinner at the hotel next door (this time I substituted a chocolate cream pie for beer), I got back to the hotel to find that Smugmug was doing a service update. Since I couldn't upload pictures, I didn't do my daily blog update either, and instead passed out for an early night.
Friday was a trip of many highs. Having gotten the work done on the bike in San Jose and wrapping up a week worth of meetings, it was good to be back on the bike ... new shoes and new clutch working perfectly. What had originally been planned as a 5:00am start, things wouldn't actually get started until 6:30am. To my surprise, rush hour getting out of San Jose was pretty light. Either it was because so many people took off work Friday to make for a long weekend, or if I was just heading away from where everyone else was going to, it made for a nice commute out of town.
My first stop was to be Yosemite National Park, on my way to Nevada. When looking at the map to plot this trip, I never realized how close Yosemite was to the Bay area, so this would be a great time to run through there. Zooming in on Yosemite a little more, I noticed a mountain pass called Tioga. I remembered a discussion about Tioga Pass over on the BMW SportTouring forum, so I did a little more digging on the subject. The Tioga Pass had just opened for the year on May 11th. Only a couple weeks earlier, they had plowed the road to clear all the snow, and done any necessary road repairs to open the pass. Being this early in the season, I knew the scenery would be fantastic, and I was hoping that by hitting it on Friday I would miss any of the holiday weekend traffic.
On the way into Yosemite on CA120, the first hint of nature's beauty came from the Don Pedro Reservoir.
Just up the road from the Reservoir was the entrance to Yosemite. Speed limits inside the park where significantly lower, 35-45mph, but no matter as the number of stops I would take for pictures pretty well negated any speed I would have made through the park if there were higher speed limits.
There were a couple of places where there was water flowing down over the landscaped rocks as the snow and ice melted from the caps. I was hoping to get a picture of one, but I didn't find the right one without a significant amount of car traffic already around it.
As I worked my way east through Yosemite, the elevation was slowly climbing. The highest point in Yosemite would end up being over 9900 feet above sea level, it was the climbing in elevation that brought on more of the snow ... along with much cooler temperatures.
Just before I hit the Tioga Pass, I'd come up on an incredible lake, nestled in the higher elevations, surrounded by hard rock and spectacular trees:
From there it was over to Tioga Pass, and descending into the town of Lee Vining. After getting several tips about the the Mobile gas station in Lee Vining (Hank, the Exxon turned Mobile), I had planned on making that my lunch destination. The food court inside the Mobile is called Whoa Nellie Deli. Based on the recommendations of others, I went with the World Famous Fish Tacos. Ohhhh ... incredible! The air outside still had a nice chill to it, but to spend a half hour or so sitting outside, at that picnic table, overlooking Mono Lake to the East ... definitely good times.
After finishing up in Lee Vining, it was time to head towards Rachel NV for a trip along the Extraterrestrial Highway. My second concern when planning this route was that I had learned that there was to be some big UFO spotter event in Rachel over the Memorial Day weekend. Again, I was hoping to make it out there before the crowd.
Along the way to Rachel, immediately upon leaving Lee Vining, was a trip out through the Inyo National Forest. Just to the east of the Mono Lake area, the forest was pretty scorched, looking like it had recently been involved in one of the area's wildfires in the not to distant past.
At Benton, I would pick up US6 and continue heading East. US6 would run into US95, and from there to Tonopah NV. There, US95 continues south, but I would continue running east on US6 towards NV375. Just before coming up on NV375, I would have my only deer scare of the trip. Coming upon what looked to be a recent deer hit, I let myself get distracted by that and didn't notice the two deer standing in the left side oncoming lane as I round the next turn. Hard on the brakes, the two deer would dash off the road away from me, with nothing more to come of it from that.
Making the turnoff from US6 onto NV375, I was now headed south/southeast towards Rachel. There were signs up at US6 and all along NV375 warning of low flying aircraft, but I never saw any. Maybe the signs were referring to us motorcycles, but more likely it was a training area for the flights out of Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas. Or maybe they meant the secret flights into Area 51, which was also near by.
Finally hitting Rachel, I pulled into the Little Ale Inn (Little Alien) bar and motel. Since there was a sign for the ET highway just outside of town, it made a good time to stop for pictures, plus pick up a tshirt for Cass.
With the convention going on this weekend, it was readily apparent that there are people out here who still firmly believe that area 51 is a UFO mecca. On that note, it was time for me to get the wheels turning again and get on to Vegas before night fall.
The rest of the ride into North Las Vegas would be uneventful. I made it to the hotel just as sunset. Today being the warmest day I've had to ride through this trip, I decided a shower before dinner was appropriate, followed by dinner.
Tomorrow would be the longest day of the trip ... only I didn't realize just how long yet.
posted by Charlie at
11:15 PM
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