Death Valley Adventure - 2010
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Avern and I decided to ride together this morning to begin our routes home.
After packing up, we rode around the Panamint Springs campground to say goodbye to the remaining inmates.
Here's Avern and I just about to leave...
We decided to start with a short ride over to Ballarat, one of the ghost towns in the DV area.
The Ballarat General Store
Already time for a short refreshment break...
Supposedly, this truck was used by Charles Manson and his followers. The Barker Ranch where the Manson family stayed is just a little ways southwest from Ballarat.
From Ballarat, we headed towards the Lake Isabella region intent on finding the Remington Hot Springs for a quick soak.
Our first try at finding the hot springs took us to a neat little area above the Kern River, but not to the hot springs.
We found the Remington Hot Springs a few miles further down the road.
They're down there somewhere.
Surprisingly, we met an AdvRider inmate and his wife in the parking lot. He had missed the Death Valley ride, but showed us the trail down to the hot springs. We climbed down the trail (which is actually fairly steep) in our riding gear and boots.
Down at the bottom, it was off with our clothes and a good soak in the hot springs. There are actually three different cement and river-rock pools, all maintained by volunteers. There was a fairly sizable group already there, but they were a friendly bunch and offered us a nice cold beer to enjoy while soaking in the 100+ degree water.
I obviously didn't take any pictures while there (you don't need to see a bunch of mostly old, nude people), but grabbed these from the internet to show the three hot spring pools.
After soaking our weary bones for awhile, we headed north and ate lunch in Kernville.
After lunch, we headed east (on Hwy 155 I think), until Avern headed north towards his home in Hanford; while I continued east towards the coast, and stayed the night north of Cambria.
The Ride Home (Monday and Tuesday)
The next morning was absolutely beautiful. I woke up early, had breakfast, and was packed and on the road by about 8:30am. I was really looking forward to a great ride along the coast on Hwy 1. And it was a really great time during the morning. Once past the Big Sur area though, I could see the clouds up ahead around Monterey, and between Monterey and San Francisco it started raining. And it was getting colder by the minute.
Although I originally planned to take Hwy 1 all the way north, after crossing the Golden Gate Bridge I decided to stay on Hwy 101. The coast looked really cloudy and I was afraid that it might get really socked in with fog. In the meantime, the rain kept coming down, the elevation was rising, and it was getting colder and colder. Even the cars got fewer and fewer as the weather turned worse, and I didn't see another motorcycle on the road for the entire trip home.
It started getting dark, and the rain was sometimes turning into a mix of sleet and rain. I really wanted to keep heading north until I could start descending in elevation towards the coast again, but finally had to give up after reaching Garberville at about 9:00pm. I, and most of my gear, was soaking wet. I got a hotel room, and started laying out all of my gear and clothes trying to get them dry. I probably spent at least about two hours using the hair dryer to also help in drying out my gear.
I was thinking of just waiting out the storm, and staying in Garberville on Tuesday; but the morning weather forecast was calling for snow later in the day, and I didn't want to get stranded by a snow storm. So I packed up on Tuesday morning, and headed out again.
If hell is really not fire and brimstone but instead a frozen wasteland, than most of my ride home on Tuesday was a ride through hell. It ended up to be another 10 hour ride; 8 of which it was riding through freezing rain, hail, and freezing winds (the other two hours was just through freezing wind while soaking wet). I even rode through snow at an elevation of about 100' near the coast somewhere near the Calif/Oregon border. I was stopped by a police officer at one point that wanted to stop me from riding through one section of icy roads, but I told him I had no choice as there wasn't any shelter around to hole up in and I convinced him that conditions would only be getting worse.
I rode Hwy 101 all the way north until reaching Lincoln City in Oregon, and then finally turned inland for the ride into Portland and home in Camas (just north of Portland, OR). It finally stopped raining about 30 miles outside of Portland.
It was probably my worst day on a motorcycle ever, but still worth it in the big picture because of the great time I had in Death Valley!