We were out the door by 7:45am and began the ride on the loneliest road in America - US50. The morning ride on US50 was anything but lonely when you have your best friend with you. There were few cars and good time was made on a very desolate ride across valley's and over "passes".
148 or so miles later found us in Ely, NV where we refueled and I eventually found a replacement bulb at a NAPA store.
US50 goes across the barreness of the NV desert and mountain ranges. It was miles and miles of just scenery (some man made)
The portion leading into Austin was very twisty and a nice end to that segment of the ride. We gassed up at the local Chevron and purchased some mementos of "Surviving HWY 50". We also spoke with a couple who were on a HD trike towing a teardrop trailer. They were returning home to Reno from Sturgis. The next section was a long and desolate section. There were even warning signs about low flying aircraft and when we arrived at Fallon, we learned it was a Naval Air Station where Top Gun fighters are trained. We even saw 2 jets take off. In Fallon we refueled and re-hydrated (it was 100 degrees). We headed out of town on NV447 to Gerlach so that we wouldn't have to ride through Reno.
NV447 is a long and straight road, but it has many unusual rock formations.
The Gerlach area is known for it's Gypsum processing operations. It was definitely a white area and it was also EXTREMELY windy. It was probably the strongest wind I have ridden in. We refueled in Gerlach and then continued on north on NV447 which became twisty and eventually went over a mountain pass which dropped down into California and the Surprise Valley Road. This delectable road runs north along the east side of the valley and ends in Cedarville where we turned west on CA299 (another fine motorcycle road). We rode this fine road to US395 where we turned south to spend the night in Alturas.
Our lodging for the night was at the Rim Rock Motel (highly recommended) on the north end of town. We also ate at the Brass Rail Basque restaurant (again highly recommended). The restaurant serves dinner family style and it was simply terrific and reasonably priced.
Needless to say, the hostess got a kick out of the cow in the picture of the dinner.
While we were waiting for our dinner, the couple next to us were also riding their motorcycle. They had been gone about the same length of time we had, but they had only logged some 1200 miles while we are at 3800 miles. It turns out that their idea of a long day is 200 miles, and we are ticking off triple that pretty much every day.
Tomorrow the plan is to tag the last of the "bonus" dams and we'll then head north to Oregon to tag some cafes and the remaining 3 dams.
Trip Statistics:
Daily Mileage 627
Game Spotted: 2 large herds of deer near Cedarville.
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