Day 10
May 24th 2004
I brought along 11 minidiscs for this trip. Each minidisc can hold the equivalent of about 5 CD's and I've arranged them by themes, such as '70's music, French music, Jazz, etc... This morning I was trying to figure out in which mood I was in and what would go well with today's ride. I picked the classical music one and set out to explore Death Valley. It was kind of weird. I was staying at the same hotel we stayed at on September 11th 2001. We had watched the planes go into the towers from the hotel room just before leaving to explore Death Valley.
Death Valley is a different experience to be sure. For one thing, it is a huge park and there are not many visitors at a given time, probably because it is so darn hot in there. It was about an hours ride from Ridgecrest and already I could see that the place wouldn't be packed with people. The temperature at 07:00 was starting to warm up, about 24 degrees or so.
I'm actually cheating a bit with this picture. The actual sign to welcome me this morning was just a plain brown sign measuring about 2 feet by one foot on the side of the road saying something like "Entering Death Valley National Park". This fancier one you see here was where I exited the park, on the Nevada border. but who'll know eh ?
I rode for about 150 km without seeing anyone at all.
As much as I had that creepy feeling of aloneness when I was in Western Texas, today's feeling was much more serene and peaceful. Maybe it was Bach's melodies playing in my headphones or maybe just me that's getting used to being just a little dot in the scenery, but it was a quite pleasurable experience. There was no wind at all and the temperature was quite reasonable. I felt as though the park belonged to me alone. I also didn't have any fears about breaking down, as I figured if something was to go wrong with the bike, it would have done so by now. I had my tire repair kit, so even a flat shouldn't be a big disaster.
I took a little 'detour' loop through some mountains, but the quality of the road deteriorated quite significantly. I guess when it rains in these parts, there is a lot of flooding and the roads get washed out. There were several sections where there was no pavement left. The "dirt" around here consists mainly of jagged rocks and I took it extra careful, because I didn't want to rip up my tires that are starting to be a bit worn.
The bike was loving these cruddy roads though, the suspension soaking up the potholes and ripples in the road without complaint.
After I rejoined the main road into the park, there was quite a bit more traffic, meaning that I would meet a car about every 10 minutes or so. I got to the place where you pay the entrance fee (which is situated in the middle of the park for some reason) and it was closed.
There had been extreme winds on Friday night and the whole front part of the building had been ripped out. They would not be collecting fees for a little while longer.
As I was coming down from the mountain and into the valley, I was watching the altimeter function on the GPS and looking at the temperature gauge on the bike. The lower I got, the hotter it was. The temperature peaked at about 31 degrees, which is a lot cooler than it was the last time we were there. Just to give an impression on how much altitude changes there was today, look at the following graph
The first dip is actually the floor of Death Valley. I didn't go to the lowest point today, only maybe 50 feet below sea level. It's how quickly it went down from about 6 000 feet that was pretty neat. It wasn't switchbacks at all, just one long hill, going straight down. I was thinking that this would be one heck of a hill to pedal a bicycle up, with the heat an all...
I took a different road than when we were here in 2001. This time I went up towards a place called Scotty's Castle, where a guy built a big castle in the middle of the desert I think in the early 1900's. As I was getting there, I passed a large snake that was crossing the road, maybe 3 or 4 feet long, but fairly 'thick'. I turned around as quickly as I could, but when I got back to the spot, he was long gone. Too bad...
I had briefly contemplated taking a shortcut from Scotty's Castle to a place called Big Pine. This would save me about 50 km in my ride, but it was dirt roads. If these dirt roads were anything like the ones I'd seen earlier, there's no way I was up to that. I asked one of the guys working at the Castle and his reply was; "they pop truck tires". Okay, that's all the info I need...
Turns out I'm happy I had to take the long way around. It made me go through another mountain pass along highway 168 that was probably one of the most pleasurable bits of road I've done in my life. Perfect pavement, lots of switchbacks, lots of crests and dips that let you enjoy some "G"'s and non-existant traffic. I can't believe I had the whole place to myself. This was better than Blue Ridge Parkway (although a lot shorter). Really glad I took the detour.
Then, of course came Tioga Pass, in the mountains.
No, that's not the White Sands National Monument, this is the cold stuff, and there was lots of it. The temperature never went lower than 10 degrees, but it felt colder. After a while I had to dig out the electric vest and put it on. Geez, that feels good, when you're cold and you plug in the electrics, Mmmmm, toasty...
Nice views to be had too...
The ride through the pass was very nice as well, but there was much more traffic than the previous pass I had just done. The RV's are out in full force in Yosemite NP.
Coming out of Yosemite, there were more cool roads to do. This one will mean nothing to everyone except for Hélène and I.
The last time we were there, we took a picture of me in front of the same scenery and I had a sad look on my face because I was saying that these roads would be great on a bike. They are :-)
Today was a very twisty day, and perhaps my most fun one yet during this trip. This is why I wanted to come to California and I had a great day enjoying it. The only difficult part was going through the San Francisco area during rush hour. Actually it wasn't that bad, because in California they allow "lane splitting". That's where a motorcycle is allowed to filter through between lanes of stopped traffic. It's not totally legal, but there is no law against it, so the police tolerate it. I did it a few times, rather timidly, compared to others that I saw doing it. I guess I don't have the narrowest of bikes either...
Tomorrow I head up the Pacific Coast Highway. Hope it's not too foggy...
Day Stats:
Total Distance: 1 040 km (Ridgecrest, Ca through Death Valley, to Sebastopol, Ca)
Total Time: 11 h 34 minutes
Overall Average 87.5 km / h