The ride for the day took us up the coast to San Francisco for a ride across the Golden Gate Bridge. Hugging the ocean all the way on HWY 1 meant we would expect to encounter plenty of cool air, some fog and a wee bit of rain - we weren't disappointed since we got all of those things. I was actually kind of happy about that. Motorcycle riding is supposed to be about experiencing what the world has to offer and if that means finding fog in an area known for fog then we got exactly what we came for!
We did manage to stop and nab a couple of pic's of the Pacific Ocean from the roadside:
John taking in the view...
My GTL and the ocean with some of that fog hovering at the shore.
I didn't manage to nab any pic's of the S.F. area because as luck would have it the bridge was totally fogged in.
Somehow I got lazy and didn't double check the routing we built and the route from the bridge to Yosemite took us back into San Francisco, across the Bay Bridge and then East - I thought we would be going east from the North end of the Golden Gate. That meant we got to ride through the middle of S.F. and experience all of the fun of the traffic that comes with that trip. It's not my usual preferred route type but I suppose I can mark it off my list of things to do. Taking pic's while navigating traffic and steep hills wasn't going to happen so again, no pictures from that part of the ride.
Getting to Yosemite was just a matter of heading east on the highway and plugging away. We weren't sure what to expect when we got there because massive forest fires had been burning for a couple of weeks. For all I knew it was still going to look like this (news photo)...
Fortunately most of the fire had been contained by the time we got there so what we saw were lots of scorched trees but it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected. We ran into some fire fighters at the gas station just outside of the park who were covered in soot but they didn't look too worse for the wear so I figured things must be pretty much under control.
We stopped at the entrance and bought a couple of Annual Passes that would get us into all of the parks nationwide for the next year. I don't hit the parks all of that often but I don't mind supporting them and using the pass is infinitely easier than paying at every park. The ride through the park was awesome. Perfect roads, amazing views and virtually no traffic. I suppose the fires and the fact it was a weekday kept the visitors to a minimum.
Resting at the gas station before entering the park...
A few pic's from inside the park...
The shadows were getting long and it got dark before we made it out of the park so we did some fun downhill slaloming as we worked our way toward Fresno. Tooling along in 6th gear with virtually no throttle, never touching the brakes, while sweeping through an endless series of smooth turns while the engine quietly hummed for minutes at a time was almost surreal. Eventually we did make it to our hotel in Fresno and after a quick bite at the local iHop (nothing but the best) it was time for good nights sleep before heading out toward Sequoya National Park in the morning.
Thank you Mr. President
Before heading off to sleep I checked my email and found a rather saddening bit of news - all of the National Parks would be closing at midnight because our government leaders are too inept to work out their differences. Blame who you want but for me the guy in charge gets the credit so he gets the blame too. That Annual Pass isn't looking like such a great investment now.
I thought about making a quick call to the White House to fix the situation but decided that having a dozen or so 'men in black' knocking on my door at 2 am wasn't going to help anything. Basically suck it up, curse the fools in D.C. and plow forward with a smile is all we could do.
No comments:
Post a Comment